


Rude Mechanicals

by madame_faust



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2020-10-12 21:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 39,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20571092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: This is version of Europe ripped from the imagination of Jules Verne and the nightmares of Mary Shelley. Marvels of steam, electricity, and engineering have brought the continent to a new Renaissance, land wars are a thing of the past - now nations fight for control of the skies. On land, the gap between rich and poor becomes ever wider, while a new underclass emerges: the Automata, mechanical servants whose efficiency and durability have pushed the laboring classes out of work. A criminal underground has emerged where parts are traded, and some desperate, ordinary men and women are forced by chance or necessity to join the ranks of the Augmented - a subcategory of human being whose bodies have been enhanced through illegal surgeries.The daughter of a music-box maker, with a genius for mechanics. The disowned second-son of a comte, turned revolutionary. A pilot, allegedly killed in action, but resurrected from the battlefield. A battalion leader, who deserted his post in pursuit of the pilot. A nobleman with a secret. A ballerina, torn between two worlds. All the players in this strange opera, who will come together upon a stage of chrome and glass, in Paris, the city of lights.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by littlelonghairedoutlaw's AU Contest, though I don't think I'll finish it before the contest ends. A Steampunk reimagining of Phantom of the Opera with secrets, science, and, naturally, music.

**Alsace-Lorraine, Disputed Territory 1880**  
**Elevation: 10,000 feet**

"Aviateur Erik Lafitte." A shuffling of papers, a squinting eye a careless reply. "Shot down by the enemy. Killed in action."

Sergent Dalir Mazandarani, commander of the Rozier Battalion of the French Aeronautic Service was not usually one to question a ranking officer. On this occasion he made an exception.

"I'm sorry," Dalir said, trying to keep his voice steady and his hands from shaking. His throat was suddenly very dry. He swallowed and hoped the Lieutenant did not notice. "I received word he had survived."

"Not according to my documents," the Lieutenant replied and, reshuffling his papers, tucked them away in his desk. Hardly a fitting burial for a man who...

Dalir's eyes burned with tears he would not - _could_ not - allow to fall. 

"Is there - is there a chance your documents are wrong?"

"_Sergent_," the Lieutenant looked at him with a note of warning in his voice. "I am sorry you came all this way for nothing, but I think that is all the more reason you ought to return to your battalion. I'm sorry for the loss of the pilot, but there are others. He will be replaced. Buquet will return you to your unit."

For a second, Dalir felt he must know what it was to be one of the Automata, for his body behaved without his conscious thought. He saluted, clicked his heels and accepted this dismissal with proper bearing and comportment. His arms and legs moved as though powered by electrical impulse and the rote instructions of a punch-reel. But though his body acted in accordance with his rank and training, his mind was a thousand miles away. On a riverbank, in Burgundy. 

_They had come down from the skies for shore leave and a resupply. It was Erik who insisted on going for a swim; he was brought up by the sea in Normandy and no sooner had his boots touched the ground than he wanted to get his feet wet, it seemed. Took a bit of cajoling to get his Sergent to come along with him, but not too much; Dalir went under the pretense that he didn't trust Erik to keep himself out of trouble, though both of them knew his alterior motives. Still, a veneer of rank, must be preserved._

_Erik found them a secluded little spot on a huge, sprawling vineyard. Picturesque, though it was still springtime; no one was much about in the fields, which seemed critical in his choice of venue._

_"Come along," Erik urged, taking Dalir's hand and running downhill toward a stream, as though they were children playing hide-and-seek. In a way they were. The rules were the same, in any case, though the consequences for being caught were much worse than a childhood forfeit. _

_But Dalir smiled and laughed as gravity got the better of them and they tripped, falling, then rolling pell-mell down the hill, cushioned by thick grass leading down into a rushing stream. Dalir was content to sit and watch the clouds lazily float by, but Erik was pulling off his boots, laying his jacket down and taking his shirt off with all the swiftness of a man with a fever. _

_"You can't mean to _swim._" Dalir propped himself up from his supine position on the grass to stare at him in disbelief. Though the sky was blue and the air was warm, it was only early April. The water was probably freezing. His dismay was only felt half as fervently as it was expressed; being outraged at Erik's foolishness kept him from staring too hard and too longingly at his body. Dalir was not himself a small man, being slightly above average in height and build, but Erik was taller than him and broader. He had the thick build of a laboring man, but his height meant he carried it well. Though his size ought to have been an impediment to flight, his quick reflexes and instinctual handling of the aircraft more than made up for it. He was considered one of the best pilots in the service._

_"In fact, I do mean to swim," Erik replied cheerfully, loosing his belt and pausing before he let his trousers pool around his ankles. He left his underthings on, adding a cheeky, "I don't want you to think any _less_ of me," before he darted into the water._

_Dalir's attempt at relaxation fell away. The water was deeper than he initially supposed and after wading in up to his hips, Erik cast off from the bank, disappearing under the current. Dalir sat upright, a lance of worry making his stomach clench when Erik did not immediate resurface. He crept closer to the edge of the bank, on hands and knees when all of a sudden with a great swell of movement, Erik resurfaced, soaked through and freezing. His lips, when he hauled himself out of the wet to place a kiss on Dalir's slack and shocked mouth, were ice-cold. _

_"Swim with me?" he asked, playfully batting the water toward him. Dalir shrank back, shaking his head. _

_"Not on your life," he replied. In a great show of dismissal, he put his hands behind his head and lay back down in the grass again._

"Sergent."

Buquet's soft voice and gentle hand on Dalir's elbow startled him back to the present. If his eyes were wet and shiny, Buquet chose not to notice. Instead, he led him to a lift platform, but rather than stopping at the hangar where the ambulance vessels were held, he stopped their progress and looked up into Dalir's eyes. 

"You told me he was alive," Dalir said, coming back to himself just enough to wrench his arm out of Buquet's grip. The young medic said nothing. "You _told_ me he was alive!"

Time seemed to side-slip again and Dalir remembered the conversation that followed by the river, Erik lying beside him, letting the sun bring some warmth and life back into his body after his swim in the river. Dalir was still staring at the sky. Erik propped his head up on his elbow and stared at him

_"I don't know how you can look up there," he complained, "when the world below is so much more beautiful. Nothing but blue and white up there. Blue and white. See it every day, it never changes."_

_Dalir turned his head and looked at Erik. His eyes were blue, but not in the manner of the sky; they were dark and mottled through with green. Rather more like the sea._

_"If you don't care for the sky, why did you enlist with the _Aéronautique_?" Dalir asked. "You could have joined _La Royale_ if you like the wet so much."_

_Erik laughed; it was a rich sound, a booming sound that rang out in the quiet of the fields. Dalir always felt as though he'd won a private victory when he made Erik laugh, it transformed his whole face. Erik had a serious countenance, a heavy brown, broad jaw and a straight, Roman nose. Handsome, but in a dark, roguish way like the English Highwayman of yore. When he laughed or smiled, though, his face lit up and those sea-blue eyes sparkled. It made him look young and merry, like a boy. _

_"I was conscripted," Erik reminded him. "And I thought, in the end, I'd rather fall than drown. This might be your career, _Sergent_, but for me, it's...an intermission. Let me guess, when you were a _petit sergent_, tucked up warm in your cot, you used to dream of flying?"_

_Dalir had to admit, that was true._

_"You belong in the clouds," Erik said, smiling, but a little sadly now. One of his great broad hands, rose and the long, lithe fingers of his left hand stroked the air, millimeters away from Dalir's cheek. He tilted his head up and completed the contact. Erik's hand was still cold from the water._

_"And where do you belong," Dalir asked, his cheek slowly warming the skin of Erik's palm. Erik's thumb stroked the delicate skin under his eye, like he was wiping away a tear._

_"I? Why on the stage, of course!" Erik started with a boastful tone, but his expression changed and the way he looked at Dalir under his eyelashes suddenly made him seem bashful. "I'm a fair singer, you know. Not that there's time for music with drills and munitions checks and...but we've time now. Would you like to hear me?"_

An echo of that voice, deep, pure, resonant, and beautiful enough to break a heart, had sounded in the back of Dalir's mind ever since Erik's craft was hit by the Prussians.

"He was alive, sir," Buquet replied steadily against the accusation. "He _is_ \- damn it all."

Buquet's dark eyes closed tight and his head jerked slightly to the left, as though he was engaged in an argument with someone Dalir could not see. When he opened his eyes again, his gaze was steady, his jaw set in determination. 

"You outrank me," Buquet said, restarting the lift, going up, this time, away from the hanger. "If it comes to it, I'll say you forced me to show you. I wouldn't put you in this position, but...I know what he was to you. What you were - _are_ \- to each other. And what they've done...I don't think it's right."

_They?_ Dalir thought, but did not ask. He had a feeling that if he asked too many questions just then, Buquet might change his mind and reverse their course. The lift doors opened and the two men were let out onto a floor of the dirigible that was so dark and quiet, Dalir was immediately put in mind of a hospital - or a morgue. 

Their footsteps were the only sound on the polished floors, followed by the mechanical clicking and sliding of bolts as Buquet entered a complicated combination into door that was locked like a bank safe.

"Remember," Buquet said in a hush to Dalir as he paused, hand on the latch. "If word of this gets out, you forced my hand." 

No light filtered out from the room behind the door, but a sound caught his ears; a low hum, and whooshing of air, in irregular combinations, like the sound of a dozen out of sync bellows. 

A palpable sense of foreboding ought to have warned Dalir off entering the room. It would have been best, he was sure, to tell Buquet to close the door and take him to the hangar at once. But all that was overcome by Dalir's need to see Erik again. To touch his hands. To hear his voice. If Erik was behind that door, so too Dalir would be.

"I'll remember," Dalir said resolutely. "Open the door, Buquet."

It took his eyes a minute to adjust to the darkness. Slabs were laid out in rows on either side of the door. Headless Automata, mechanical arms and spidery torsos, the barest mimicry of human form in their shapes, tended to a dozen figures, lying still as stone on cots, but for the irregular wheezing of machines designed to push air into lungs.

"I would have prepared you," Buquet said quietly as Dalir took in the sight of the forms on the beds. At first he thought they were more Automata, but with greater consideration given to forming human heads, hands, and limbs...but his breath caught and his eyes widened with horror as the truth of the situation dawned on him. "But I thought you should see for yourself. They call it the _Le Projet Lazarus_."

"Where is Erik?" Dalir asked, his voice a harsh whisper, even as his mind rebelled against what he was seeing. Half-men, half-machine. _No. No, no, dear God, no._

Silently, Buquet raised his arm and pointed to the farthest bed.


	2. Refuse

**Paris, France 1881**  
**The Paris Opera House**

The Palais Garnier had been completed on-schedule, despite the war that raged in the skies. The city had so far been exempt from any shelling and the old buildings as well as the new soared toward the heavens as though in defiance of their enemies. A cease-fire was on and tense negotiations of a peace were begun. Half the newspapers were cheerful and were ready to declare an end to hostilities before the generals did. The other half predicted doom and assumed this was a temporary calm before a devastating storm.

Christine Daaé was a mere groundling in this great theatre of the sky. Her attention was riveted to the Palais, Charles Garnier's masterpiece of brass, iron, and glass. The whole thing glittered in the sunlight, a modern tribute, it was said, to the famed Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Both a celebration of the past and an embrace of the modern age. The perfect setting for the nationa theatre.

The midday sun glinting off the glass dome at the top of the building hurt her eyes and Christine shielded her gaze against the glare. She couldn't help but think that the building, for all its beauty, was cold. Nor could she help recalling the eventual fate of Versailles most famous inhabitants.

Pulling her duster around her throat, she made her way through the crowd assembled on the ground; the ballet rehearsal rooms were located on the side of the building in a room whose outer were thick glass, rimmed around the edges in a lattice of iron, which made the dancers within look like subjects in a living picture frame. It was customary for men and women to gather to watch them stretch and practice. The theatre was one of the only places in Paris that never employed Automata and the site of girls of flesh-and-blood, stretching their arms and elevating themselves on their toes, moving in almost perfect synchronicity never failed to attract notice. 

Christine herself had come to see a ballerina, but not out of a nostalgic longing for the good old days when Automata did not have faces and hands as common folk did, nor the prurient curiosity of those seeking a look at long limbs and necks without having to pay for the pleasure at a house of ill-repute. She stood at the edge of the crowd, waiting until the assemblage around her thinned, allowing her passage to the side doors. There she waited patiently beside a poster someone had marred the pristine glass surface with.

There was an image of a laborer, a man whose arms were thick with muscle under his shirtsleeves, rolled to the elbow. His blandly handsome face was set in a thin line and the words that circled the image declared the defacer's political allegiance.

**FLESH AND BONE NOT RUST AND OIL. HUMANITY OVER AUTOMATA!**

She turned her face away from the sign, away from the sun and waited until the door opened.

"You came!"

The speaker was an astonished-looking young woman, with black eyes and dark skin, wrapped in a silk dressing gown. Giuseppina Sorelli was the daughter of an Italian military general of some small renown who left his Ethiopian lover with a child in her belly and promise to return to marry her. The child arrived and the promise never came true. Mother and child came to Europe in search of him only to discover the cad was married and had quite forgotten the family he left behind in Africa. The woman found employment as a laundress, until her position became Automated. Her daughter, luckily, had an undeniable beauty and talent for dance. 

"You knew I would," Christine replied, a small smile curving her mouth. "Otherwise you would have dressed, I think, before you left for the day."

They both looked down at Sorelli's bare feet and shared a laugh; it felt good, but foreign. Like speaking a language she'd forgotten; Christine had precious little to laugh about these days. 

Reaching into the pocket of her robe, Sorelli drew out a cable and held it for Christine's perusal. A glance down at the name it was addressed to made her recoil. **_Little Lotte._**

"I told you," she said, shoving her hands in her coat and looking back at the poster marring the glass wall. "I don't do that anymore. I don't _want_ to do that anymore."

"Madame insisted," Sorelli said, still holding the paper out. Her dark eyes darted around nervously and little wonder; contraband communications had no place in the national theatre. "Believe me, if it wasn't important, she wouldn't have asked me. I know how it's been for you, losing your father - "

"How could you?" Christine shot back, nastily, regretting the words before she'd even spoken them aloud. "You've never had a father."

It was a low blow; beneath Christine's character to give and Sorelli's character to accept. For a long minute the two women stared at one another, the cable between them like a no man's land between two armies.

Christine relented first.

"I'll take it, if it's important," she said. _I'm sorry_, she added silently, only looking remorsefully look into Sorelli's eyes and hoping she would forgive her. 

"I'm sure it is - I _know_ it is," Sorelli replied. When Christine took the cable, she reached out and squeezed her shoulder. _All is forgiven._ "I've got to go back, but I'll see you soon, won't I?"

Nodding, Christine tucked the paper into the breast pocket of her coat and bid Sorelli good-bye. The brass door closed with a heavy thud as the lock fell into place. Wrapping her arms around herself, Christine made her way down the road, ducking into a dark alleyway before she took the cable out and read its contents.

**Little Lotte**

**Consider this weregild Forgive me Toulouse 500**

**RC**

Christine's eyes burned with hot, angry tears and she balled the paper up in her fist.

"You are such a _fool_, Raoul," she spat, as though she had him here in front of her. Sheer practicality and not a little desperation stayed her hand. Toulouse 500 - a safe deposit box at the Banque de France. Hardly a cipher worthy of him, but he had been slipping of late, hadn't he?

Weregild. As though money was proper recompense for what happened to her father. And yet. Her own meager funds were running dangerously low and she hadn't managed to rebuild Papa's workshop after the raid. She would be an even bigger fool than Raoul if she let this promise of money slip through her fingers because of spite.

She stuff the note, wrinkled and worn, back into her pocket. Wiping her eyes on the back of her gloved hand she was about to leave the alley when a sudden noise made her start, the hair on the back of her neck pricking up. Had someone seen her? Sorelli? Seen them both_ together_?

She kept a small pistol on her person for emergencies, but until now she'd never fired it. Her heartbeat picked up and she turned slowly toward the source of the noise. Her right hand found the pistol in her pocket, her thumb resting on the hammer, though she did not draw it back straight away. All was silent except for the blood pounding in her ears. Maybe it was nothing. Someone opening a window in an upstairs apartment, though the weather was too cold to warrant that. Or else, more distastefully, but less dangerous a prospect, a rat scurrying about in the refuse. 

Then the sound again. A _screeee_, like metal-on-metal. A mechanical wheeze. An automaton?

Warily, ready to draw back the hammer and fire if she had to, Christine approached the sound. Her leather boots did not make noise on the cobbles beneath her feet, not even scraping on the grime of the roadway as she walked. The sound came again. _Screeee._ And that wheezing, like a broken bellows.

The source of the noise seemed, at first, like nothing more than a pile of scrap. Metal tubes and pipes in a jumble on the ground. Maybe it was a rat after all, picking through the detritus of some rubbish, the tossed-away remains of a broken, useless machine. 

Christine released her hold upon the pistol, and the breath she'd been holding. She was about to turn heel and hurry on her way when she she heard the wheeze again. And the scrap heap started to _move_. 

Her brilliant mechanic's mind put the details together. The pipes and tubes were aligned into the clumsy joinings of a leg. The pile of rags was a coat, of sorts, pulled taut against a wide back. There were spindly metal spikes, a crude approximation of fingertips, poking out of filthy black gloves. 

She'd seen Automata before; had lived her life building, shaping, and repairing them. The sight of one, broken and neglected as this one was, ought not have shocked her. But then the head afixed to the broad shoulders turned. And she brought her hands to her face to stifle a gasp, pistol forgotten in her pocket, cold steel banging against her hip as she stumbled backward.

A man's face had been stretched across half of the skull that she could see. It seemed designed to be a handsome face, she thought with a clinical detachment. A strong jaw brow with one visible eye, blue and green, with a luster and depth not usually seen in the eyes of Automata. But the rest of the face was obscured, with a mask-like apparatus affixed to the lower half of the face, bulky, triangular. It seemed to force air into the torso, but she could hear from the irregular pattern of the breaths the thing took that it was broken.

_You have a gift_, mitt hjärta_. To take something battered and broken, almost beyond repair, and restore it...that is a powerful talent. Nothing is ever lost, not to you. Nothing beyond ressurrection. _

Christine reached out one hand tentatively toward it. The blue eye widened in fear and it cowered away from her. The breathing became harsh. The scrape of its metal limbs seemed to ricochet off the buildings that closed in on them from all sides. 

"You poor creature," she whispered. "Shh. Shh. I won't hurt you. Be still. Be still."

Some were of the mind that Automata could not think and certainly could not feel. That they were the sum of their parts, wires, metal, and tickertape punchcodes. But the soul was invisible, wasn't it? And yet all men claimed to have a soul, to be more than the sum of _their_ parts: blood, gristle, and so much meat. When she was a child, Christine vowed that she would be kind to all. She hadn't been very kind to Sorelli, admittedly, but Sorelli was tough. She could take it. This creature...it seemed helpless. She crouched down and reached out again.

This time the creature lay still. She felt the outline of an arm, the cool, rough texture of the synthflesh beneath the threadbare coat. Its dark blue eyes met her light blue eyes. She smiled. The wheezing breath calmed and slowed.

The sky overhead was becoming dark. Christine glanced up. Night was descending and the streets could be dangerous. Whatever this creature was, it had some awareness of its surroundings; she couldn't bear to leave it behind to the scrappers who might coming through the alley looking for loot.

"Can you stand?" she asked, hoping the creature had been programmed to understand French for it was her only language, apart from a smattering of Swedish endearments her father taught her. "I know somewhere where you'll be..."

She trailed off, not wanting to lie and say it would be 'safe.' There was nowhere like that. Not in Paris. Not, she thought, in the whole world.

"Where I can look after you," she said honestly. "I have tools. I'm a mechanic. A good one too."

She straightened up and held out her hand. "Come?"

The creature seemed to understand. It nodded, at least, though it did not take her hand. It braced its gloved limbs upon the ground and rose to stand; as it did, Christine almost took up the pistol again, on sheer panicked instinct. 

The metal limbs creaked and groaned as the creature rose up and up and up; it towered over her, the top of its head nearly scraping a fire escape that descended down from the building nearest them. It had to be nearly seven feet tall and broad, indestructible as a tank. Dark spots stained the coat it wore like blood; it was leaking oil and lubricating fluid. No wonder it scraped and clanged when it moved. The face was cast all in shadow now, but for the triangular mask which dominated the skull and caught the dim sunlight that made the Palais beyond them shine ruby-red. 

She was astonished. Evident care had been taken with the creation of the thing standing over her. The limbs were thick and strong, but not rusting, made of costly steel. It had to have cost a fortune. Why had it been abandoned?

But those were questions for another time. For now, Christine had to get the creature back to her home - what was left of it. The main avenues would still be too populous, they would attract too much notice picking their way past the restaurants and cabarets that brought the world to the famed City of Lights to forget their troubles in an absinthe haze. 

"Come with me," Christine instructed as she walked past the creature, determined to stick to the darkest corners and backstreets she could find. She reached out again, her gloved fingers touching the tips of its pointed metal ones, and it pulled its hand away from hers at though her touch hurt. Christine looked up into what she could see of the creature's face. Only the left eye was beautiful and human-looking. The right was a round, white orb. Not even painted into a facsimile of humanity. So strongly, oddly constructed. It was fascinating. A puzzle to solve.

"Come," Christine instructed again, striding down the alley. She looked back once more to urge the creature to follow her. With a long, stuttering wheeze, and a harsh grating of its joints, the creature lumbered toward her and together they made their way into the labyrinth of roads leading to the place that had once been her home.


	3. Slumming

Philippe, Vicomte de Chagny, prided himself on dressing perfectly. Not so fashionable as to invite comment, not so primly as to invite excessive notice, but perfectly designed to appear as just another face in whatever crowd he happened to be part of. To that aim, he found a good valet was not only preferable, but necessary. Many men of his station preferred to employ Automata for the task, but Philippe eschewed the fashion; he needed a man with a mind and a keen eye and ability to express himself, not merely a mechanical creation that could knot a necktie or shine one's shoes faithfully.

It had taken weeks to arrange the get-together he was attending that afternoon in a hole-in-the-wall cafe in Ivry-sur-Siene. Normally Philippe did not like venturing so far from the city center for a luncheon, but there were extenuating circumstances to take into consideration. 

A simple suit of brown worsted was chosen for the day's activities; he might be one of the clerks or managers of a processing plant in the area. He forewent a walking stick and a topper that wanted the band about its brim changed. That completed the look of middle class gentility. Anything else would have attracted attention. 

He dismissed his valet and chanced a glance at his pocketwatch; if he took his own carriage, as he had every intention of doing, he would arrive at his destination promptly. 

But the best laid schemes of mice and men 'gang aft a-gley', whatever that meant. He had been just about to call for the carriage when he found his efforts stymied by his father. 

Philibert, Comte de Chagny, was a hearty-looking man near seventy, though anyone who encountered him thought he must be a decade younger. The Comte too prided himself on dressing perfectly to the occasion and the contrast between father and son was stark; Philibert was dressed in a fine black suit, ornamented with medals he had been awarded by the government for his aide and support during the conflict with Prussia. In light of the recent peace talks, Philippe thought it was odd his father was turned out like a general, but knew it best not to comment. 

"I'm taking the carriage," the Comte announced, causing Philippe to falter in his progress out of the house.

The Comte said it in a casual manner as he pulled on his gloves, but the timing of the remark felt pointed; he would never be so gauche as to out-right speak of where Philippe was bound (or, more to the point, who he was meeting when he arrived at his destination). A minor inconvenience in travel, a wrinkle in his plans that could seem happenstance, but was_ just_ contrived enough that he would wonder...well. That was his father's way of conducting his affairs. Affable enough in conversation, but leaving no doubt that he, the Comte, would always hold the upper hand. 

With a keen-eyed glance at Philippe, he seemed to instantly know all the secrets his mind was concealing. And he confirmed it too, with one word, spoken as a question, "Slumming?"

"Going out," Philippe replied evenly; he could hardly have been considered a good son if he did not observe his father and learn from him. "I wouldn't like to be pick-pocketed."

A humorless smile briefly curled the Comte's thin lips. "Neither would he who would make a mark of you, I think?"

A cold bolt lanced through Philippe's chest at that. It was nothing, the remark, on the surface. Nothing at all. The Comte might have spoken of the difficulty a common thief would make for himself in targeting the heir to one of the greatest fortunes in Europe, but that wasn't what his father was referring to at all. Philippe was canny enough to know his father's meaning and intention, but not quick or clever enough to respond.

"Where are you off to?" he changed the subject instead, fiddling with his cuffs in a would-be-casual manner even as he felt cold sweat dampen the underarm of his shirt.

"Just a luncheon, with the war minister." Amazing the way his father could address heads of state, as though they were neighbors. 

"To do with the peace talks?" Philippe supposed. Wrongly, apparently, for his father smiled at him in a condescending way one might look at an overeager schoolboy, calling out an incorrect answer and humiliating himself in front of his classmates. 

"Take care, dear boy," his father said, still smiling. "Wouldn't want anything to happen to you. It would break my heart, and those are not easy to come by these days."

The tap-tap-tap of his father's walking stick against the floor echoed the beating of Philippe's own heart. He closed his eyes, breathed in, and composed himself. 

_He's only needling you because he knows it upsets you. He's only needling you because he knows what you're about and he doesn't like it. He has every reason to disapprove. Pull yourself together. You'll be late._

It was a quick business, finding a cab. The driver was an Automata who wasn't fussed about the distance, nor was it desirous of a tip for its trouble. 

Philippe stepped out of the cab into the humidity of Ivry; though autumn was coming hard on their heels, this part of the city was always warm; the heat and smoke from the factories, kept churning building new machines for daily life or, most recently, the war effort, made the air thick and stuffy. Even now he could see the plumes of smoke rising from the chimneys of the long stone or brick buildings that once employed thousands, but now were increasingly Automated. 

The impact of Automation was visible around him as soon as he stepped out of the cab. 

"I haven't any ready money," he repeated over and over as here men, women, and pitiful children asked for alms, spare change, anything to alleviate the misery of their lives.

His closest sister in age, Félicité had gone on a bit of a temperance kick recently and was rallying support among the members of her ladies' guild to impose curfews upon the bad element in society and mandatory curtailing of hours that establishments which sold liquor could be open. Their younger sister, Grace, though not political by nature, was inclined to agree with her; after all, shouldn't the poor be spending their meagre earnings on bread for their children?

Philippe supposed he could agree in principle, but seeing the wretches huddled in doorways, wearing rags that would not keep out the approaching winter chill, he couldn't blame them if they wanted to forget their troubles, however long they were able. Still, he didn't give them any money or even pause in his passage through the dirty, smoggy streets. 

The cafe was unmarked and the windows so dark with grime, it looked like it was closed. Philippe knew better, however and went inside. No bell tinkled to announce his arrival, but it didn't matter. At a table tucked in a cramped corner sat his luncheon companion with two cups of coffee, one half-drunk, in front of him.

Philippe paused in the doorway and took in the sight of his brother as Raoul half-rose and beckoned him over. He wasn't too thin, he didn't think, though the dreadful beard that covered his face hid matters, as did the double-breasted coat he wore. It was the last item that remained of his naval uniform and no matter how many times Philippe offered to buy him a new coat, he refused. Any time Philippe offered to do anything for him he refused.

If Philippe expected a hearty embrace, or even a handshake, he was disappointed. Raoul sat as Philippe made his way toward him and all he said in greeting was, "You're late. I thought you weren't coming."

"I was delayed," Philippe replied. "Sorry to keep you."

The coffee in front of him was cold and almost undrinkably bitter, but Raoul did not summon a waitress to refresh it for him. Philippe took it as a matter of penance and drank the sludge in his cup, trying not to grimace. 

"How are you?" he asked, imparting real feeling into his voice, hoping Raoul would answer the dozen questions he wanted to ask. _Are you eating enough? Do you have somewhere to stay? Not a pile of blankets on the floor of some rat-infested cellar or abandoned union hall? Won't you give up this foolishness and come home?_

"I'm alright," Raoul replied, leaning back on the two legs in his chair, giving Philippe a challenging look, as though he expected his brother to scold him for his slovenly posture, like he was a schoolmaster. Philippe didn't rise to the bait; he gamely took another sip of coffee instead. "And yourself?"

"Perfectly well, thank you."

"Has the Opera season begun?"

This was the one topic that the two of them might discuss without fear of the conversation devolving into argument. Politics were untouchable, as well as the rest of the family, but Philippe was a passionate and well-known patron of the arts. Raoul was not an ardent devotee of music, but he didn't disapprove of it. It seemed, sometimes, that music was the only thing his younger brother did not disapprove of. 

"Yes - well," Philippe amended, "nearly begun. They're rehearsing the season's opening production which will begin performances in a fortnight. Would you like to come?"

Raoul smirked. Philippe did not know when he'd learnt such an expression, but it suited his face ill. Raoul had a round face, dimpled cheeks, not that one would know it under all that hair. He looked like an absolute rascal when he smirked in such a way.

The girls blamed the Navy. The institution which they thought would provide stability and purpose to a young man, adrift in the world, seemed to have the opposite effect. Their father and Philippe knew rather better, though. The seeds of Raoul's discontent had been sown long ago; his service only exacerbated tendencies which were already in evidence. 

The smirk was one of the less objectionable of his new habits, along with smoking cigarettes and developing a fondness for amber-colored liquors brewed in illegal basement stills. 

"I'm busy," Raoul dismissed the invitation. Then, added, "I wouldn't have a thing to wear."

_Come home, then_, he clearly expected Philippe to exclaim, enraged. _Won't you stop playing Marxist and come home at last!_

But Philippe would not give him the satisfaction. He was Philibert de Changy's son, after all. Where the Comte was always one step ahead of the Vicomte, Philippe was always one step ahead of Raoul, much as his younger brother would be loathe to admit it. A big public blow-out was all Raoul needed to wipe the slate clean for good, to cut off all ties and all contact. Philippe wouldn't let that happen. He couldn't. 

And, he suspected, that Raoul didn't want to go to that extreme either. He'd met him, after all, hadn't he? Made a point to ask after business at the Opera. And he waited, slowly sipping away at a frankly revolting cup of coffee for his brother to walk through the door. 

"How's the girl?" Raoul asked, in the affected accent of the lower orders he'd adopted while he was away at sea. "Julietta, was it?"

"Giuseppina," Philippe corrected him. She went by Gigi to her friends. And to him. "She's very well. In rehearsals, along with the rest of the company. She has a solo in this production, she's very excited about it. You should come to the Opera. I'll introduce you."

Raoul snorted, turning his head away. The flat-brimmed cap he wore shaded his eyes so that Philippe could not read his expression well. "And what would you say that I am to you?"

"My brother, of course."

"_Of course_," Raoul muttered, left hand drumming out an impatient tattoo on the tabletop. "As though nothing's happened. How long are we going to keep this up, Philippe? I know you love the opera, but I didn't think you fancied yourself an actor."

Bait. And he wouldn't rise to it.

"As long as you'll see me," Philippe said, truthfully. "We've never had a quarrel that I know about. Whatever your feelings are toward our father - "

"It's not - damn it, Philippe," Raoul cursed softly, left hand curling into a fist on the table. "It's nothing to do with you - or with_ him_, come to that. It's what you are, what you've done, what you've_ allowed_ to happen. It's what you _represent_. You and all the others who wine and dine while everyone else suffers. Didn't you see them out there, in the streets? Didn't you notice?"

_Of course I've noticed them. But what the devil am I to do about them?_

"Their condition is unfortunate," Philippe replied, knowing his words were an egregious understatement. "But there's nothing to be done."

"There was _something_ to be done," Raoul replied at once, with feeling. "Until men like Papa and the clergy raised holy hell about it. How are the people supposed to compete with Automata without Augmentation, eh? When the bosses in the factories demand speed, precision, nonstop production - " 

Philippe could feel his pulse pick up. _Tickticktickticktick._ "I won't debate the matter with you. What would be the point? It's nothing to do with me. I only want to know if you'll come to the Opera."

The fist on the table convulsed once, then relaxed. Philippe's tone was measured and steady; there would be no argument. Nothing for Raoul to fight. On that point he was determined.

"What are they putting on?" Raoul asked, then chuckled to himself. It was the first time in the conversation that he sounded a bit like himself. Or at least, the version of himself Philippe remembered best. "Not that I'm likely to know it. What was it Grace said? I'm a hopeless Philistine."

"I don't think she said you were _hopeless_," Philippe replied, teasingly and the tension in his chest eased. "But a Philistine, yes, a bit. _Robert le diable_ is opening the season."

Raoul lifted his head so Philippe could see his eyes properly for the first time. Light brown, like Philippe's own, open wide in surprise. "They've written an opera about your valet?"

Despite his determination to be one step ahead, the joke took Philippe aback and he laughed quite accidentally. Raoul smiled in response - a proper smile, this time - and some of Philippe's nerves that this meeting might be there last meeting abated. This was still his brother, no matter what had happened. No matter what might happen still. 

"What's it about?" Raoul asked, leaning his elbows on the table and adopting a posture of attention. For the next twenty minutes, Philippe regaled him with a story of knights and princesses, ghosts and demons. At its conclusion, Raoul nodded, consideringly. "I'll think about it. But now, I must go. It was...good to see you."

Then he offered his hand. It was not the grand reconciliation Philippe hoped for every time they engaged in one of these furtive meetings, but it was better than nothing. Philippe took it warmly, fingers lingering a bit longer than necessary, feeling the warm pulse at Raoul's wrist as a reassurance that he was well, that he was healthy, that he was taking care of himself. _Thump. Thump. Thump._

"_Adieu_, Philippe," Raoul slipped his hand from his brother's grasp and bade him farewell, as he always did.

"_Au revoir_, Raoul," Philippe replied, as he always did. Once they were both out of the cafe and onto the sidewalk he added, "Take care of yourself."

Raoul shoved his hands into the pocket of his blue coat and smiled. Then, pulling his hat back down over his eyes he walked away, merging with the crowd. 

Philippe watched him go until he could see him no more. 

"Spare a sou for an old campaigner, young man?" 

Philippe looked down. A man of middling years, prematurely aged by hardship was sitting against a lamp post, holding a cup out to him. The fingers gripping the cup were metal, but made of inferior materials. The last two digits were curled permanently into themselves by rust.

Wordlessly, he dropped a coin into the man's cup where it rang out a lonely note upon hitting the bottom.

"God bless, you, sir." The man tipped the brim of his shabby cap respectfully to Philippe and, before he remembered himself, Philippe found his right hand rising, as though he meant to return the gesture. As though they were equals.

Without another word, Philippe swept past him, looking for a cab to take him away from this place and back home. Back where he belonged.


	4. Surgery

It was no exaggeration to say that they had taken everything from her in the raid. Instruments had been smashed, valuable formulae, diagrams, and manuals scrawled in Papa's hand had been seized for evidence or burned as both contraband _and_ heresy.

Every time Christine entered the workshop, she felt as though iron bands seized her arms as mercilessly as the hands of the gendarme who held her back as her father was handcuffed and taken away.

Christine swallowed hard against the knot that inevitably gathered in her throat as she remembered that awful night. She'd thrown her head back, had been about to scream - but one look from Papa and a quick shout of, _"Sluta, Christine!" _stayed her impulse and she wept, rather than shrieked. 

Shaking her head slightly to wipe the memories aside, she turned back to her mysterious companion, silent, but for the clanking of its joints. "Come in. Mind your head."

The window displays were curiously untouched. The polished wooden music boxes stood like squat little sentinels in a row, waiting for customers who would not come anymore, not when they realized what this place really was. And yet the music boxes weren't a lie, or a front. They had been her father's first passion and every one of them, if properly wound, would create beautiful music. They were silent, though, with six months' accumulation of dust upon their lids. Christine hadn't the heart to touch them. Sometimes she wondered if she had a heart at all anymore. 

But the proof of her her heart's existence and its compassionate nature stood awkwardly by the doorway. The creature seemed too loom ever larger in the cramped shop front; it had to stoop to keep its head from hitting the ceiling. Christine slid behind it to securely fasten the door and crooked her finger at it to urge it to follow behind her. The creature did so, slowly, and carefully, a rhythm to its movements. _Clank. Clank. Wheeze. Clank. Clank. Wheeze._

She didn't flick the electric lights on until they were in the room beyond the storefront - their apartment. Her father's workshop was on the upper floor and it was to that destination she led the creature, silently praying the old wooden stairs didn't give under its weight.

The stairs held and under the incandescent lights that illuminated her father's workshop, she got to drink her fill of the creature, which had braced itself with one gloved metal hand on the doorframe, as though to prevent itself toppling over. Likely its calibrations had been damaged in whatever misadventure left it in this state. The fact that it leaned, as it did, using its hands was a tribute to a remarkable failsafe inside; lesser-made Automata were known to topple down and cause obstructions in the roadways when their calibration began to fail.

Nevermind. She could fix it. She was her father's daughter and she could fix it. 

"Lie down," she instructed, gesturing to a slab under the skylight at the top of the building. The moon was full and shone orange through the slight distortion of the glass. Harvest Moon. 

The creature lumbered over to the table, briefly pressing its hands against the slab as though testing its stability. The look it sent her with its painted-on man's face would have been skeptical, on a human being. As it was, it made her smile anyway.

"Go on, it's very sturdy," she insisted as she took off her coat and briefly disappeared into the anteroom to change clothes. She'd worn a high-necked shirtwaist and skirt to pay her call to Sorelli and didn't like to get her proper lady clothes dirty with oil and grease. A sturdy pair of woolen trousers and a boy's shirt, not too tight in the shoulder, were ideal for work. 

Christine was tying a leather apron over her work clothes when she saw the creature had done as she said; the table wasn't long enough and barely wide enough to accommodate its frame, but she could make do, remove the arms and legs and work on them piecemeal if she had to. The head and torso would keep until she was done. 

Actually, the condition of the head was so interesting that she might take that off as well, study it carefully. She might even invite Madame over to look at it, if she was discreet about it for half of it was truly exquisite work, what she could see under the mask. Half of it was distorted, a ruin of metal plates, like old cooking pots, beaten out to form a shape for half the skull. That was the right side, where the white eyeball stared unblinkingly out of its deep socket.

The _left_ side, though, that was a work of art. The two planes of the face were bifurcated by a trail of synthflesh down the middle, one side unadorned, misshapen metal, the other carefully crafted. The skin, a bit dirty now, was tanned and even red in places, like real human flesh. Synthflesh was available in a variety of shades to ape human skin, but it all had the same matte finish and dull color, no underlying tones to give it life. Someone had gone to the trouble to punch hair in, individual strands, it looked like, over half the skull and even enough to from a dark eyebrow - the very eyebrow that had been quirked at her when the creature seemed to doubt the strength of the table.

Why - ! - here she blinked in astonishment and leaned in closer to the creature to get a better look - there were _eyelashes_ brushing the human-looking cheek. It had closed its painted eye, though the other was wide open and staring. There was no eyelid on the right side that might be closed. 

It had to have cost a fortune, she thought again, marveled, really, at the degree of craftsmanship that had been applied to the creature. Why someone should craft a head so detailed, she could only guess. There were pleasure palaces that supplied such things, some made to order, but she would never have assumed even a brothel that catered to the highest-ranking members of society would have taken such care. When Automata were made to look as men and women did, their appearance never held up against close scrutiny. And though half the face seemed carefully designed and decorated, the rest of the body was not something Christine would have assumed would be at home on a velveteen couch or a plush bed. The body looked made for war. 

Christine's hand hovered over the head, about to touch the skin itself, when she froze, her body and mind briefly at war with one another.

_Warmth_, her body sense straight off, the pads of her fingers pricking with it as though she'd touched an electric wire, though her hand was still hovering above the creature, not touching. Then, _laughter lines_, her mind thought taking in the tiny little indentations in the crease of the eye, only barely visible. No one, no one, in any of Paris's famed bordellos would have ordered a creation made with laughter-lines, she was sure. 

Stomach churning with a half-realized comprehension, she cut away at the ruined overcoat the creature wore with shears. The material fell away revealing a thick neck, half of it knotted with scar tissue, then broad shoulders. _Freckled_ broad shoulders.

The shears fell the ground with a clang. Christine's bloodless fingers went over her mouth as the true horror of what she was looking at washed over her. 

This was not some strange Automata. Or even an Augment with a clockwork heart or a mechanical eye. This was...an abomination. Half-man. Half-machine. She'd never seen anything like it before. And she'd _let it into her house!_

But before panic could overtake her entirely, she found herself unconsciously attuned to the wheeze of its mechanical breathing. The breaths were slower. More shallow now and longer in coming, though more regularly timed than they had been. As though the creature was...asleep.

Christine approached cautiously, the knot rising in her throat again. Her hand rose as it had done before to cup the side of the creature's head. But this time it made contact. 

The flesh was warm. Finely textured and soft. Not the tell-tale burlap roughness of synthflesh. 

_If this was - if this _is_ a man_, Christine thought, horror being replaced with pity. _He must be in terrible pain._

So terrible he put his trust in her. In a strange slip of a girl who offered him help. Help he so sorely needed that he took it without question. Almost without hesitation. The blue-green eye fluttered open and he looked at her. She was close enough now to see his weariness. And his pain.

"You poor thing," she breathed, stroking the human side of his face with a hand that only shook a little. "You poor, poor thing. Who did this to you?"

The creature - the man - did not reply. The eye closed again, tightly now and the head jerked against her palm. 

Even as her resolve strengthened, her helplessness increased. Christine was a mechanic. If this was a man, if some part of his body still housed human organs and still was supplied with human blood, her repair work to his breathing mask or limbs might kill him before it helped him.

_But mightn't that be a mercy?_ The thought came before she could stop it. _Whatever he is, whatever's happened to him, it's not legal. And haven't you had enough of the underworld?_

Christine's hand dropped away from the man's face. She bit her lip, turned away, lifted her chin to look at the moon, at war with herself. She _could_ help him. But should she?

There was no answer from the moon. But another voice bubbled up in her thoughts. Not her own voice. Or her father's. _Raoul's._

_Augmentation was as legal as tonsillectomy ten years ago!_ he exclaimed at a rally only the year before. A_ugments aren't illegal - they're human beings! They've been forced underground by a government that doesn't care about its neediest people! Those who need jobs! Those who are sick, who Augmentation could restore to life and health! Their condition isn't their fault!_

She thought he was so brave then, but also right. He spoke truth, to those who wouldn't listen. Could she close her ears to truth now?

"I can help you," she said, placing a hand down right in the center of the man's chest. She could feel his heart beating, though the skin under her hand was cold and rough-textured. Even so, he was a man still. "But I'll need to find someone else. A friend. A man I trust. You can trust him too. Do you understand me?"

He nodded. Hesitantly, his right hand came up, the metal fingers encircled her wrist entirely, but the grip was very slack.

"Good," she said. "I'll have to leave you to fetch him."

The slack grip tightened. _Don't go_, the pleading eye seemed to say. _Don't leave me alone._

"I'll be back very soon, I promise," she vowed. She bit her lip. This could be dangerous...but wasn't she already in danger? Hadn't she always been?

"Just lie still - rest," she murmured, soothingly. Then, with a nervous glance to the door, satisfying herself that no one had followed them or was lying in wait to strike, she parted her lips and started to sing. 

Memory rose again. She'd been sick, she and her mother both had been sick. Christine alone had recovered. But something important had been lost to her; Papa had the means to give it back. 

_Lie still. Close your eyes, _mitt hjärta_. When you wake up, you'll be all better. Even better than you were before._

The singing had its desired effect. After a brief widening of his mobile eye, the man went very still. And the hand that had been holding her wrist fell back to his side. 

Once she was satisfied that he was asleep, Christine sprang into action. She divested herself of the apron and threw on her coat, taking care to wrap her throat in a scarf since the collar of her shirt did not sufficiently cover her neck. She locked the door to the workroom behind her and ran through the house, keeping the lights on so the neighbors would think someone was home. She exited the building out a side door and ran as fast as she could down the street.

Christine was sweating and out of breath, nursing a stitch in her side, when she knocked on the door of an elegant townhouse. The maid must have been dismissed for the day, for no one lesser in stature than the lady of the house greeted her, pleasant expression sliding into concern shocked as she beheld the state Christine was in. 

"Madame Valerius," Christine gasped, holding herself up on the door frame, just as the creature - the _man_, damn it all! - had done before. "Is the Professor in?"

"Yes," Madame Valerius replied, reaching out with one hand to beckon Christine into the cozy foyer beyond the door. "But come inside, poor child, let me get you - "

Christine shook her head and cut her off rudely, "I'm sorry, but there's no time. I need him to come at once, to my father's shop. It's an emergency."

It was a credit to her father's relationship with the couple, or perhaps their own lingering attachment to Christine, their frustrated ambitions as parents fostering a strong bond with the child of their dear friend, that Madame asked no more questions. With a quick, but thorough look up and down the boulevard, she nodded and said only, "Wait here," before disappearing back inside the house to retrieve her husband.

Doctor Valerius made his fortune in Augmentations before the procedures became illegal. At first, his clients were among the creme de la creme of society, little heirs and heiresses with weaknesses or imperfections of the body, patched up and improved for an exorbitant rate. He was lauded in the newspapers for his charitable work, performing complex surgeries upon the poor and destitute for nothing. Only after the government became concerned that those among the groundlings would surpass their betters in strength and stamina and they made Augmentation illegal (except by special dispensation) did he stop his official business. The doctor wisely retired before the law went into effect, became a guest lecturer at the university. It was all quite above board and genteel.

Only, he never quite got over his charitable streak. And it was this generosity of spirit and good regard for her that Christine hoped to turn in her favor now. 

The venerable, silver-bearded old man appeared on the doorstep bearing two large medical bags, one of which he handed to Christine. "Your father's shop?"

She nodded, clutching the heavy bag tightly; she just managed to restrain herself from rushing toward him with a grateful embrace. There would be time for that later. "Please, there's...I've never seen anything like it - "

The Professor held up a hand to stay her babbling.

"Lead the way," he said, bringing a finger pointedly to his lips. 

Christine shut her mouth and nodded tightly. The very walls had ears, sometimes. She couldn't be too cautious. She should remember that, always. As...as Papa had not.

With a grateful nod to Madame Valerius standing in the doorway, Christine turned on her heels and walked swiftly home, the Professor following close behind her. As they walked, she prayed. Prayed that the Professor could help that poor man she'd found in the alley. Prayed she could do some little good for him as well.

And - this was her most fervent prayer - she prayed that none of them got caught.


	5. Lovers

Some might find the idea of a ballerina playing a nun to be gently ironic, but for Gigi, the role was one she relished. She felt like a dervish of blue and white tulle and though the greasepaint stained her skin a nasty grey which looked horrid in the footlights, she didn't mind it too much. She had a solo, after all, albeit a brief one. She was the first of the legion of the undead rise from the grave to torment Robert himself. As she spun round the stage, contorting her back and spine to unnatural configurations, she recalled the religious women in her childhood who would deign to give her an allotment of flour and jug of oil to take home, but would not hand the items to her mother, an unrepentant sinner in their eyes. She hoped the audience would find her performance suitably grotesque.

After rehearsal she skipped her usual ritual of applying salve and bandages to her cracked and bleeding toes and instead rolled her stained stockings up her legs in haste; she had an engagement to keep. 

"Mademoiselle Sorelli. A word?"

Her gleeful departure from the Opera was halted when Madame Giry called her away. Her heart sank; not another errand. Not another message. Not _tonight_.

Madame sensed her thoughts for the old woman's face changed from its ordinarily hard and disapproving expression into one of gentle, almost maternal, indulgence. "Don't look so gloomy, girl, I shan't keep you long."

Madame was a painter employed by the Opera. If Gigi had to guess, supposed the woman had recently come from putting the finishing touches a hellscape for the finale - there were red stains on her smock that looked alarmingly like blood, or would have if Gigi didn't know any better. 

"Yes, madame?" she asked respectfully, clasping her hands in front of her with all the wide-eye innocence of a convent girl.

Madame knew better, for her lips curled downward into a disapproving frown. But whatever she thought about Gigi herself, she kept her countenance and only removed a small vial from an inner pocket of her smock. Laudanum. 

"The chemists in the city are a bunch of thieves," Madame said in a commiserating tone, though Gigi had said nothing upon the bottle making its appearance. "There. Take it."

Gigi fingers itched to reach out and take what was offered, but she lowered her eyes and stopped herself, interlacing her fingers to keep them from grabbing at the bottle greedily. "No, thank you, Madame. I haven't the means to repay you just now."

"Did I ask you for a fee?" Madame asked. Before Gigi could pull away, she reached out and deposited the bottle into her reticule. "For that matter, did I tell you_ I_ had purchased it? It's a gift. Treat it as such."

"No, I - "

"'_Thank you, _Madame_'_," Madame Giry said, in an educational tone, like Gigi was a toddler learning her manners. 

_If she was this strict with her own daughter, Meg would have a much nicer disposition, I'm sure_, Gigi thought, but minding the manners her own mother taught her, merely inclined her head gratefully and tightened the strings on her reticule. "_Thank you_, Madame."

She was not so delayed that she missed the tram, but arriving late at the stop meant she had to climb all the way to the top deck where she was jostled considerably. Her hatpins gamely held fast, but her hair sprang out of its careful arrangement by the time she arrived at her stop. The bellhops at the hotel eyed her askance, but the clerk at the desk was nothing but professional as he wrote down the false name she gave him in the ledger and handed her the key to a pre-purchased suite. 

The room was empty when she arrived; not too late, then, despite everything. 

Philippe offered to supply her with a ladies' maid, but the notion made Gigi uncomfortable. She'd always gotten by on her own and the thought of a stranger dressing her, bathing her...it all felt too intimate and strange. Yes, even with an Automata, which he offered when she struck down his idea of employing a woman to tend to her. 

Gigi took off her hat and unpinned her hair, letting her hair fall down around her shoulders like a curly brown halo. She tied it up in a scarf, not wanting to get it all wet, as she drew her own bath. Though she was no stranger to this hotel, she still marveled like a child as she turned the hot water tap and steamy water poured instantly from the spout. Divesting herself of her clothes (neatly folded, another of Mamma's carefully taught lessons) she sank into the hot water and let the warmth soak into her tired muscles and take the worst of the pain from her feet. She rubbed her skin with soap that smelled like roses and massaged thick cream into her elbows, kneels, and heels after the water cooled and the tub drained. Skin soft and smelling sweet she wrapped herself in a silk dressing gown and waited on the bed.

Philippe was not the first man she'd taken to bed, but (as transcribed in her diary) he was her first _lover_. It was the first time she'd pursued a man, not the other way around. It hadn't begun that way. Not at first. At first he was like any other man come to the dancers' lounge for a spot of diversion.

Some said the only difference between working at a high-end bawdy house and the corps de ballet at the Paris Opera was the pay; ballet girls got a pittance. After the Vicomte was announced as a new patron, there was a bit of a reception thrown in his honor by the management. Gigi was one of the girls lucky - or unlucky - enough to add a spark of interest to what threatened to be a dull affair otherwise.

At least the Vicomte was handsome, she remembered thinking. Younger than most of the patrons, a man in the prime of his life, rather than a grizzled old codger who couldn't keep his hands to himself. He was strapping, with dark blonde hair and a well-kempt mustache. Lovely brown eyes the color of honey. But it was what he did not do, rather than what he did, that caught her notice. 

He didn't speak to anyone. Of course, when he was spoken to, he replied with a courtesy that some might mistake for friendliness. But he did not invite conversation. And while the other patrons and management were eager to engage the attentions of the young ballerinas, he remained curiously aloof. He looked at them - he _was_ a man, after all - but he did not speak. He did not touch. Like he was a beggar at the feast rather than the reason for the gathering.

The party moved from the Opera to a dance hall. The Vicomte went along, played the sport, for it would be rude to depart from the festivities early, but once again he remained on the outskirts of the action, not approaching any of the girls either from the Opera or from the hall, to beg a dance.

It was Gigi who approached him. Her reasons for doing so were almost purely practical (one of the patrons was pursuing her particularly keenly and she'd heard he had a predilection for asking the girls to let him lay his head upon their chests and call them 'Maman'). But she could not honestly say she didn't find him attractive. Or wonder why he was so shy.

_"Dance with me, monsieur?"_ she asked coyly, looking up at him under her eyelashes in a would-be-innocent manner, as though she'd never danced before herself and wanted him to guide her. Men liked that, she found.

He had been about to demure with a quiet, _"No, thank you, mademoiselle - "_ but he caught sight of her pursuer approaching rapidly from behind with a plaintive look on his face. Gigi followed his gaze and something of her distaste must have shown on her face, for he seemed to change his mind.

_"If you'll allow me the pleasure,"_ he said instead, taking her hand in his and leading her to the very edge of the dance floor.

It was a waltz, simple in execution, but he was endearingly hesitant, as though he truly wasn't in the habit of dancing with anyone. He glanced down a good deal, mindful not to trod on her toes. Gigi couldn't help smiling, not the practiced smile of a coquette, but a real smile. He was sweet, she thought, as men were rarely sweet. He caught her eye and smiled back. It wasn't like it would have been in a novel, that exchange of smiles. She couldn't rightly say she was in _love_ with him. She only found him lovable. That was all.

They danced another. Then one more. It was on the third dance that she remembered herself, remembered that they weren't two strangers who found one another in a crowded ballroom. This was business, after all. With a rehearsed, dreamy sigh, she pressed herself closer to him, went to lay her head upon his chest -

And he stopped her. Stopped in the middle of the dance. Took a step back from her, and the loss of contact left her cold. What had she done wrong?

Looking into his face for some answer, she was astonished by the emotion she clearly read there: fear. Before he carefully smoothed his expression into studied nonchalance. He kissed her knuckles. And murmured his goodbyes, leaving the party shortly thereafter. The other patrons were quite in their cups and did not seem to mark his abrupt departure.

Gigi had. For a few days after she was worried she might be sacked, a result of offending, rather than enticing the new patron. But the ballet master did not pull her aside for a quick word. No gossipy mouths muttered about how badly she'd erred in her conduct with the Vicomte. And, most tellingly, he came back. He sought her out, coming to her with flowers after a performance. Nothing was said about the aborted dance, but he asked if she would like to go to dinner with him. She accepted and slowly - _slowly_, as though they were really courting - she came to know him better. 

A knock on the door made her sit up, a little thrill dancing down her spine at his arrival. "Come in."

Philippe appeared in the doorway, cheeks reddened by the cool air out of doors. Gigi knew his brother, Raoul, having met the two separately and never together and at times like this she marveled at the difference between them. Though Philippe was well over ten years his brother's senior, he always seemed to her like he should be the younger of the two. His face was less careworn, less strained. And he always looked at her with such open eagerness, like a little boy, rather than a man. 

She opened her arms to him and he dashed to her side without even removing his coat or his hat, lifting her bodily off the bed as though she was light as a feather. He buried his face in her neck and breathed her in. She wrapped her arms around him in turn, feeling the heaving of his breath in his back. Philippe took care never to hold her too tightly - honestly, sometimes he was a bit too gentle, handling her as if she was made of glass - so it was a little alarming that he tightened his grip around her, crushing her close.

When mere discomfort threatened to become pain, she murmured an urgent, "_Philippe_," into his ear.

At once his hold loosened and she was returned to the bed.

"Forgive me," he muttered, his face reddening with embarrassment, not chill. Gigi smiled at him to show that all was forgiven and she moved over, patting the space beside her invitingly. As Philippe took off his coat and jacket, shoes, collar, and cuffs, she started to untie her wrapper, but he reached out and covered her hands with his own. "Not...today. May I hold you, instead? Just hold you. Please?"

How strange that he should ask for that as though it was an indulgence. A hardship on her part. Naturally she assented at once, leaving the knot at her side securely tied. Instead she simply burrowed against him, letting him place his arms around her. Now she was permitted to lay her head on his chest and hear the regular movement of his heart. _Tick. Tick. Tick._

It had been a long, slow pantomime of a courtship for that reason. He had to know that he could trust her discretion. Another girl might have tried to blackmail him if she knew the son of the Comte de Chagny was an Augment. He hadn't even told her, really. One night, in the dark, he raised her hand to his chest - a part of his body he did not like for her to touch skin-on-skin, even now - and let her feel the cool, roughness under his shirt. Synthflesh, that could leave red, rubbed marks on her skin, if they weren't careful enough.

Even his own brother didn't know. Raoul, the Revolutionary. She supposed that must have been what got him started on his crusade, but evidently not. She'd never addressed the matter directly with him, with either of them. It wouldn't do her any favors for either of the brothers to know just how intimately connected she was with both of them, albeit in entirely different ways. 

Though, she reflected as she closed her eyes and lay against Philippe, she liked the elder rather better. Raoul, in the manner of most young men who thought they understood the world, had a cocksure sincerity to him that drove her to distraction. He could pontificate on the failings of man, his plan for the betterment of society until she wished she was an Augment with detachable ears so she didn't have to hear him. Gigi had to hand it to Christine; she had seemingly endless patience for his speeches and his philosophizing. But then, Christine was as enamored of the cause as Raoul was. At least she had been, until her father was arrested. Politics made strange bedfellows.

This arrangement, with Philippe, was one she understood. Or at least, she thought she did. Here and now, with his ardent embrace and insistence on platonically laying by her side, she only knew that he was troubled and could not fathom why. 

But she didn't ask. Philippe was not a philosophizer. He did not share his mind easily and if pressed would clam up tightly, retreating into his own thoughts, gently, but firmly pushing her away. In time, when he was ready, he would tell her.

She was almost dozing when he spoke. "I saw my brother, finally. Took ages to arrange a meeting."

"Did you?" she asked sleepily, slender brown fingers toying with one of the ivory buttons on his shirt. "Renault?"

"Raoul," he corrected her. She heard the smile in his voice and looked up, returning it with one of her own. "I invited him to the Opera. I want him to meet you."

Gigi had a lot of practice relaxing her body, not bolting away, or stiffening up when she was faced with an unpleasant prospect. The control helped her improve her dancing. And Avoid uncomfortable confessions. "Oh? That sounds nice. What did he say?"

"He refused at first," Philippe said, with a sigh. Gigi's heart ached for him; he truly loved and missed his brother. She saw it, heard it, felt it every time he spoke of him - which was often. Sometimes, she wanted to lay into Raoul, take him by the shoulders and shake him. Tell him that for all the good he thought he was doing in the world, he was breaking his brother's heart. But she dare not. It wasn't her place. Raoul thought she was having a dalliance with Philippe the way she might any other patron who could offer her gifts and money and a little temporary security, as far as their whims would allow. And Philippe didn't know that she was acquainted with Raoul at all.

"But?" she added, sensing there was more coming.

"I think...I _hope_ he might come. Just for an evening," Philippe replied. "To know him now, one wouldn't think...but he was a sweet child. Good-natured, cheerful. He loved everybody. And everybody loved him."

_Now only Christine does - and not even her, I don't think,_ Gigi mused silently to herself. She wrapped an arm around Philippe's middle and held him tightly. "Did his disposition change as he got older?"

Philippe nodded, and now she saw a resemblance between the two. She rose up on her side and looked down at him, smoothing his hair back from his creased and worried brow.

"You don't have to tell me," she reassured him. "Not if it hurts. Come here."

She shifted so that his head was cushioned against her chest and shoulder, though he thoughtfully shifted so she wasn't bearing all his weight. He was heavier than he looked. It was because of the machinery in his chest, keeping his heart and lungs working. Keeping him alive.

Gigi draped her arms around his shoulders, hand dangling over his heart. Philippe took her hands in his, so that they were entirely encased. Touching him, but not touching him.

"It was our mother's passing which...started it," he said haltingly, always finding it easier to talk to her when he wasn't looking at her. "Consumption attacked her lungs. He was twelve. Augmentation wasn't illegal yet - the law wouldn't be passed until the spring and we buried her at Christmastime. He wondered why our father wouldn't employ a surgeon her."

Gigi wondered the same thing. They had the means. Why not buy an Augmentation while they could?

Philippe replied to her unasked question, "My mother was staunchly against Augmentation. Always had been. She thought it was unchristian. That it robbed the body of something essential. That in cutting out the - the _heart_, one excised the soul as well."

She thought of the heart that worked away, just under their joined hands. _Tick. Tick. Tick._

"But you - "

"I was Augmented without her consent. Without her knowledge," he interrupted, his voice falling to a whisper. "My father said I was going to an open air school. I had been a sickly child. Weak heart. Underdeveloped lungs. They thought there would be another son. But Félicité came five years after I did. Grace another four after her. My father was concerned there might not be another boy. He had to work with what he had. Improve what he could."

Augmentation ought to have been a blessing to them. But something in Philippe's tone told her it hadn't worked out that way. Sorelli lay her cheek against the top of his head, keeping her arms steady and tight around him.

"I was...I was so happy," he recalled, with a sorrow in his voice that did not align with his words. "For the first time, I could run. I wasn't ill and tired all the time. I could take a full breath. You don't...you don't know what it's like. As though you were born into a body that was a prison, and then to be_ free_ all of a sudden...it was like a wish had been granted. Like magic."

Gigi thought she could understand, a little. To be born into a world that seemed determined to make her struggle. Then to put on a costume and assume another identity, another form. To dance. That was a kind of freedom too.

"Was your mother very angry with your father?" she asked. This too she could understand, but Philippe shook his head.

"If she was, she never said a word against him that I could hear," he replied. "No, it seemed she was only angry - terrified, I think. Of me. I must have seemed a stranger to her, looking back. She brought up an invalid and I was...I became quite the opposite."

Gigi thought of the way he held her, the way he was so careful. How easily he might hurt her; Augments were not merely restored to status quo - they were improved. At least, they were meant to be. "Did you hurt her? Accidentally, I mean, I know you would never hurt anyone."

Philippe shook his head again. "No. She wouldn't give me the opportunity. She wanted me kept away from her. She...a few years later, she had Raoul. I think she gave him his own portion of love and mine as well. I didn't blame her. I couldn't. He was easy to love. But that, I think, is why he took her passing so hard. Why he's never really forgiven us for letting her go."

Gigi kissed the top of Philippe's head, tears pricking at her eyes. _This_ was what Raoul and the others like him did not understand. They fought for the lower orders and while she was grateful, she thought they only saw part of the picture. The laws, the customs, the war. It was harming everyone. 

"Why didn't you tell him?" she asked. "About you, I mean." _It might make him love you again._

A variety of factors. Their mother was so ashamed of him that she wouldn't allow the word 'Augment' to be spoken aloud in their house. The procedure was already controversial when Philippe was Augmented, and once it was illegal it became downright taboo to speak of. Not to mention that his father was at the vanguard of those who whole-heartedly embraced their new world order. Gigi wondered if he had a change of heart when he saw what Augmentation had done to his family. 

"Now, I...can't," he concluded. "I wouldn't know how to say it. I've_ lied_ to him his whole, life, after all. I think it would make him hate me."

This last he added so softly she wasn't sure if he was speaking more to himself than he was to her. Gigi tilted his chin up and met his eyes determinedly.

"No one could ever...Anyone who would hate you is a fool," she amended, thinking of the late Comtess. _You're easy to love too._

Maybe it was a bad habit as much a matter of protection, keeping her thoughts to herself. Either way, she did not tell Philippe she loved him. But she kissed him. Touched him as gently and as reverently as he touched her. And hoped it would be enough.

"I have to go," she said reluctantly, hours later. The moon was waning and the streets were dark. But she needed to go home. Should have been home a while ago, but she didn't like to leave him. Not when he was so melancholy and had told her so much of his troubles. She could give him her body for comfort, at least. She wished she could give him her heart as well.

Philippe, gentleman that he was, insisted on paying for a cab for her so she wasn't forced to wait outside for a late tram or walk. He kissed her cheek very sweetly when he took his leave from her and she saw him stand on the sidewalk, illuminated by a street light, until the cab turned and she could see him no more. 

Mamma was waiting by the window and waved down when she saw her approach. Gigi raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, as though shaving a few seconds off her arrival home would make up for being well behind her time. 

"I'm so sorry I'm late," she said, not removing her outer layers as she bent and embraced her mother, kissing both her cheeks. "Did Madame Chouest bring you supper?"

"Yes," she said, reaching up from the wheeled chair she was sat in to hold her daughter in turn. "She brings too much, always. There's a portion for you in the stove. Were you dancing, all this time?"

Gigi turned away, hung her coat upon a peg and lied while her back was to her mother. "Yes, we're working very hard on the ballet for the new production. I can show you, if'd you'd like, before you go to sleep."

"Maybe in the morning, my darling," Mamma demurred and Gigi felt guilty sickness rise in her stomach; she should have come home earlier. Philippe would have understood. Well. She'd have to tell him of her mother's condition, but after tonight...yes. She was sure he would understand. 

Gigi wheeled her mother over to the bed they shared. She braced herself as Mamma wrapped her arms around her shoulders and Gigi helped her sit up against the bedframe as she fetched her a flannel nightgown. She tied up her mother's hair for bed and wrapped it in a scarf before she removed the lukewarm supper from the range and sat down a the rickety table and chairs to eat it. In between bites, she told her mother of the day's rehearsal, entertaining her with stories about the petit rats and the backstage mishaps that were inevitable when mounting any production. Once she was done eating, she brewed a cup of tea for her mother and added laudanum to the lot. 

Mamma thanked her and drank it down before she sank into a sleep that Gigi hoped would be untroubled and painless. When Mamma was asleep she raised the hem of her nightgown and looked at the condition of her legs. 

Mamma was a testament to what happened after Augmentation went underground. Her back and legs ached from working ever longer hours in the laundry to meet the demands of a schedule designed around indefatigable Automata. Augmented legs seemed the solution. Only their meager savings couldn't buy them a good doctor. Or clean conditions for the surgery. The flesh, where they attached the limbs, became infected. Parts of them gangrenous. A public hospital did what they could for her, but though they kept her alive, they could not do anything for the condition of her legs, other than remove them. The residual pain they could do nothing about.

But the stumps were not swollen, nor was there visible sign of infection. Gigi sighed a breath of relief, tucking the blankets around her mother's shoulders, then changed for bed and got in beside her. At night, she dreamed of a marble bath, the smell of roses, and warm strong arms around her. 

_I love you_, she murmured, free and unafraid in her dreams. _I love you._

When she woke, she barely remembered the dream. Couldn't recall if he replied in kind. But, she thought as she fixed Mamma her breakfast, helped her wash and made herself ready to go to work, she hoped he had.


	6. Madness

**La Santé Prison**

In a cell located on the eastern side of Montparnasse, Gustav Daaé sat awaiting sentencing. Half a year had elapsed since he'd been taken from his home as his daughter watched with horrified eyes. _She knows nothing about any of this_, he lied to the police. _She's only a girl. She knows nothing._

It was six months, three weeks, and five days, by his accounting. The time passed was not scratched into the walls of his cell (he'd been permitted no tools, not even a pencil with a soft lead nib with which to write). Every morning, he woke and recited the day, the month, the year. The ministry of justice was certainly dragging its feet with him. It ought to have been simple, really, given the amount of evidence the gendarmerie had seized: transportation or execution.

Little as he relished the thought of living out the rest of his days on a plantation in Guyane, he knew they wouldn't allow him to live. Even separated from his loved one and contacts in Paris, even with his workshop torn asunder and his books burned, the contents of his mind were too dangerous to allow to travel abroad. 

His mind. Gustav leaned back against the cell wall and closed his eyes. Reciting the day was one of the little habits he'd developed, in addition to spending hours lost in thought, replaying symphonies from memory, separating out each of the orchestra's parts and then putting them back together again, like a puzzle only he could see and hear. Though he might lose his life, he was determined not to lose his sanity; they might take everything else from him, but they could not take _that_.

It was a difficult prospect. Given hardly enough food, dirty water that made his bowels seize up if he drank too much of it, and no sunlight to speak of. A man might easily lose his wits. 

But that day was different. This was the day he was given a cell mate. And, though neither of them knew it yet, this was the day everything would change. 

The guards brought a young man in, wearing a torn and filthy uniform, though what service he was in or rank he held Gustav could not say; his braids and insignia had been removed, forcibly, if his eyes weren't playing tricks on him in the dim light of the cell. 

"A treat for you, Daaé, a traitor," the guard informed him, voice and demeanor oddly cheerful. For a time Gustav wondered if he was a remarkably lifelike Automaton, but no; he was only a bit of a sadist. Fitting job really. How did the saying go? 'Do what you love and you never work a day in your life.' "Perhaps they'll stand you side by side when they blow your brains out."

The young man said nothing as he was hauled in. The guard removed the iron bands from his wrists and feet that bound him, locking the door securely behind him with a clang. He went off whistling, clanking the chains together like a merry ghost. It was only when he could be heard no more that Gustav spoke.

"Are you alright?" 

Jules Valerius was the physic of the two of them, but Gustav was canny enough to know how to splint a break. Keeping a wound clean in their circumstances was nigh impossible, but would do what he could. 

The young man eyed him warily from under a hank of matted black hair. Unusual eyes. Very green. 

"Don't you want to know what I've done first?" he smirked humorlessly. "Might change your mind about helping me."

"Deserter?" Gustav guessed, taking in the uniform, the bruising on the young man's face, the split lip, the back of his jacket crusted over with old blood. "I'm not a military man myself. I've no stomach for war."

"I suppose I didn't either," the young man said, turning away to cough. "In the end."

"Let me look at your back," Gustav offered and, possibly out of weariness, the young man lay down on the pallet on the floor, allowing his jacket to be removed. The shirt underneath was a ruin, stuck fast to the skin beneath. Gustav as obliged to use some of the water he was allotted to soak the shirt so that it would pull away without further damaging the skin. 

The bed linens were the cleanest scraps of fabric he had and, carefully, he tore a sheet to strips and bound up the young man's wounds.

"Why are you doing this?" the stranger asked. "You heard him. They're just going to shoot us anyway."

Gustav was quiet as he continued the attempt to heal his back. "I'm a tinkerer by nature. I fix things. Can't help it, it's how I'm made."

At the word 'made' the man gave an odd little flinch; Gustav put it down to his own handling of the wounds on his back and tried to tread more carefully. "My name is Gustav Daaé. You never asked what I was here for."

"What could be worse than desertion during a time of war?" the young man asked, voice rising in pitch. "Or the other things I'm supposed to have done. Espionage. Making off with government_ property_."

His breathing hitched and Gustav sat back on his haunches, stopping his ministrations. He looked down at the young man calmly and asked, without judgement in his voice. "Did you?"

"No," the young man huffed. "Espionage? I can't even play cards without everyone at the table guessing my hand, I'm a rotten liar. Desertion...yes, I suppose so. But for the last..."

The young man hauled himself up, letting his arms bear most of his weight as he brought himself up to sitting. Those intense green eyes bore into Gustav's blue ones and he had the sense that this man was utterly convicted as to the truth of what he said. With a pang, he was reminded of young Raoul. 

In this world within the world he'd created - a world of dates and notes and music - there were things he tried not to think of. Could not allow himself to think of. Foolhardy, but goodnatured young men. And brilliant young girls with voices like larks and eyes blue as the sea. _Little Lotte, let her mind wander..._

_No,_ Gustav reminded himself firmly._ Absolutely not. Focus on the man in front of you. Not the boy or girl you left behind._

"People aren't property," the young man said fiercely. "I don't care what's been _done_ to them."

"And what was done?" Gustav asked, giving him all due attention. _Are you fonder of dolls or of shoes? Of riddles or frocks?_

The young man favored him with a sardonic smile. "Now, that _would_ be espionage, if I told you."

Gustav smiled back, but kindly. "Very well."

He wound the linens he hadn't used up into a ball and stuffed it into the inner lining of his coat; never knew when one would need some bandages. For a while, they sat in silence; well, near silence. Gustav started humming, as he'd never been able to bear the quiet for too long. 

The young man startled away and stared at him, wild-eyed. "What song is that?" he demanded. "Who taught it to you?"

"Taught it to me?" Gustav repeated, a little alarmed by his sudden change in demeanor. "No one - that is to say, I'm a musician. Of sorts. I was, anyway. It's an aria from an opera. I was doing a poor rendition; a bass ought not aspire to be more than he is. _The Pearl Fishers_, by Bizet. Have you heard of it?"

The young man calmed slightly, though he still had the look of someone who'd seen a ghost. "Not the opera. The song. Someone...someone I knew sang it. It seems like it was a lifetime ago. I hear it...all the time. In my dreams. I thought...I thought it was special."

"Every song is special, when it's sung by someone dear to you," Gustav replied. It was doing him good to have someone to talk to. This was a most welcome change, however short-lived it was destined to be. Acting on a hunch, he asked, "This...someone. Didn't happen to have anything to do with your desertion, by chance?"

The young man huffed out a shaky laugh. "And here you had me thinking you _weren't_ a mind reader. Yes, as it happens. Yes."

"Not a mind reader," Gustav chuckled. "I've lived a life, that's all. Was she pretty?"

The young man was quiet a long while and Gustav began to suspect that he'd missed the mark by a wide margin; no chance he'd be mistaken for a mind reader now. He tried again. "Handsome, then?"

The young man sucked in a breath. "Yes. He_ was_. I thought so, anyway."

This stranger beside him was likely handsome too, once upon a time, and could be again. There were those piercing jade eyes. And once his light brown skin wasn't mottled with bruising, his frame not ravaged by being half-starved, his mouth no longer bloodied...yes. Likely he could be very handsome.

"And where is he now?" Gustav asked, gently, imagining the story even before he had an answer. Two young men, in a dangerous war. Perhaps they'd run off, fearing something might happen to one or the other. Something unbearable. Love had a way of making people do dangerous things, foolish things, inadvisable things. Gustav couldn't lecture the young fellow about it for he'd fallen victim to his own unwise inclinations more times than he could count. It landed both of them in the same place.

"I don't know," the young man said, shaking his head. "We were separated."

"Well, I'll keep him in my prayers," Gustav said; it was all he could offer. "And you as well. It would be good to have your names, but I'm sure the Almighty already knows."

"Sergent - ah," the young man ducked his head, embarrassed to have slipped, but Gustav let it go without comment. "Dalir. My name is Dalir. And...his name is Erik. Pray harder for him sir. He needs it more than I do."

"Gustav," he insisted and Dalir nodded. 

"Gustav," he repeated. He held his hand out to shake and Gustav took it. A strange way to make another's acquaintance, but these were strange times. "So. Tell me. What are you here for?"

"Heresy," Gustav said simply. Raising his eyes to the dark ceiling, he said, "Like all true heretics, I believe I'm quite right to think and behave the way I do - He can't have any quarrel with it, can He? After all, human beings were made with minds and hands and thoughts. We were meant to be more than animals scratching in the dirt. What's the sense in stymieing man's potential?"

The green eyes lighted in comprehension. "You're a sawbones, then? An Augmenter?"

"I was," Gustav acknowledged. "Though I much prefer to think of myself as a tinkerer. What side do you fall on, in the great Augmentation debate?"

Dalir's expression fell and he looked at the floor. "I don't know. I didn't think much about it. I had a job. A career. I was healthy. It never...I never thought about it. I suppose if someone had - had put a gun to my head and made me choose a side, I'd say I suppose a man comes into the world as he is, to do with his life what he can. And to change a man would be...cheating. At least, it's not natural."

Something about the twist of Dalir's mouth, the clenching in his jaw, made Gustav think that they were engaged in more than a simple intellectual debate, but he didn't want to press him too hard; he'd told him plenty already.

"Mmm, I've heard that before," Gustav acknowledged simply. "Tell me, what branch of the service were you in?"

"Aéronautique," he replied promptly with a bit of the pride that hadn't yet been beaten out of him. 

"And," Gustav prodded him slightly. "Do you suppose, fifty years ago most people would have thought it was natural for men to fly?"

Dalir smiled in concession. "No. I suppose not."

They lapsed into silence again. This time, when Gustav started humming, Dalir closed his eyes and listened. Despite the song being an octave too low, it seemed to calm him. 

Dalir's voice was very quiet when he asked, "When do you think they'll sentence us?"

"Impossible to say," Gustav replied. "I've been waiting nearly seven months."

Dalir looked startled to hear it, "So long? Where were you arrested?"

"Paris." Gustav squinted and pointed toward the wall, as though it were invisible as a pane of glass and he could see his home. "Take a tram to the Opera, cross the river, walk a few more blocks...why?"

Shaking his head, Dalir replied, "I thought it had taken so long because of where I was in disputed territory. I thought the delay was because they sent me back here. But if you've been waiting seven months...what do you suppose it's about?"

"I don't know," Gustav admitted. He'd speculated. Everything from administrative incompetence to something a bit more sinister. The ministry of justice knew there was a network of surgeons, engineers, and the like. Any necessary thing, made illegal, would still be done, simply in secret and under more deadly conditions. Desperation would not change demand, it would only change the setting in which procedures were done. He was one of many heads on a hydra of the government's own making.

He wondered if the delay was in part theatrical. Meant to be done as a spectacle. Himself, Jules Valerius, Raoul, the disgraced son of a Comte all put up against the same wall in a public square. He hoped not. He _prayed_ not. Jules had the cover of his reputation and respectability to shield him. Raoul was a quick and clever boy and though he could be brash, Gustav trusted he knew to keep his head down. For Christine's sake, if nothing else.

"I don't know," Gustav repeated. "But for my part, I do hope they make up their minds what they'd like to do to me. The waiting's enough to drive a man mad."


	7. Sealed

A key fitted into the locked door of the abandoned-looking music box shop; it swung open easily, but slowly, so as not to jar the little bell that might jingle and give the entrant away. For the first time in half a year, Raoul stood inside Monsieur Daae's store, looking around nervously under the brim of his cap. It wasn't as bad as he'd thought, though the last time he'd been there had been right after the raid, the floor covered with toppled-over benches and broken glass. The night Christine told him she never wanted to see him again.

He'd honored her request, to a point. If his evening strolls took him past her family's shop, well, what of it? And if he lingered, watching her shadow move about in the apartment beyond the store, well, he was just looking after her welfare. Practicing vigilance. Making sure he wasn't too late, this time.

But he'd come now because he'd been summoned. Not by Christine. But summoned to this place nevertheless. 

Raoul wandered over to the display shelves, curiously intact. He picked up one of the music boxes and blew a substantial accumulation of dust off the cover; he coughed loudly, but wondered, if he lifted the lacquered lid, would it play? It had been too long since he'd heard Christine sing and though this wouldn't replace her voice, it might be something -

"What are you doing here?"

He nearly dropped the music box as he spun round to look at the back door from where the familiar voice had sounded. Christine was dressed for work, in trousers and an apron. There were grease stains down her front and she hadn't removed her goggles which made her blue eyes appear thrice their usual size. He always laughed to see her thus attired, but he had no desire to laugh now.

"How are you?" he asked before he could stop himself. She looked thinner than she had when last he'd seen her; not enough to eat? Or was she unable to bring herself to eat? God, how he'd failed her. 

"What are you _doing_ here?" she repeated, removing the thick leather gloves which indicated she was doing heavy work. Her hands seemed so small and child-like by comparison, but she put her gloves in her back pocket and folded her arms so he couldn't see her hands. When he didn't immediately answer, her voice softened, became less demanding and more frightened. "Is it to do with Papa? Have you heard something of him?"

"It - I - " as eloquent as Raoul fancied he was in front of a crowd, all it took was a reproachful look from magnified blue eyes to make him stutter. "Is the Professor in?"

The eyes behind the goggles went even wider in surprise. "Yes. How did you - "

"Ah."

Professor Valerius appeared, also attired for work, though more neatly than Christine. He seemed to be taking a hiatus, for he was packing the bowl of his pipe with his favorite vanilla-scented tobacco as he smiled blandly at Raoul.

"Right on schedule," the Professor said with evident satisfaction. He drew a match against the wall and set to smoking. "Come."

Raoul made to follow the Professor up to the workshop, but Christine stood between them, pushing her goggles up her face so that they rested against her hairline.

"You didn't tell me - no, no, this is _my_ home," she said, at first in a plaintive tone, but steadier as the strength of her conviction increased. "What is he doing here? Why must he go _upstairs_?"

It was impossible not to feel a prickle of shame and guilt (and not a little anguish) at how very far they'd drifted from one another. He remembered when she didn't want him to leave her home. When she'd lie close to him at night and kiss him, tuck her head under her chin and whisper, _'Must you go?'_ as the pre-dawn light started touching the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. He remembered when she used to sing for him, just for him, alone in the workshop when no one else could hear. He heard the echo of her songs at night when he was trying to fall asleep. It was equal parts soothing and maddening.

He remembered when she told him she loved him. He remembered when he'd told her the same. And now she didn't want him stepping foot over her threshold. He understood - oh, _God_, did he ever - but it hurt nevertheless.

"It pertains to the matter of our mutual friend," the Professor said, holding up a hand to still further objections from Christine. "I'm afraid I had little choice in the matter. You know why. I am sorry I did not inform you, my dear, but there simply isn't time to argue about it. I must have the young man come upstairs."

Christine threw a glance over her shoulder, eyeing Raoul with suspicion -_ suspicion! _As though he wasn't to be trusted. Raoul's mouth screwed up and he hunched his shoulders as he followed the Professor, bypassing Christine who followed, hot on his heels. She grabbed hold of him by his elbow, nearly making him topple backward down the stairs.

"Don't you dare tell anyone what you're about to see," she hissed up into his ear. "This isn't fodder for your revolution, nor a secret you can sell. Do you understand?"

Raoul wrenched his arm back, though he couldn't bring himself to look at her as he muttered, "_My_ revolution? I thought it was _ours_. I thought..."

His throat was tight and he couldn't bring himself to say anything more without his voice breaking and embarrassing himself. He hadn't thought she'd have forgiven him by now. He didn't think she'd ever forgive him for being too late to warn her family about the raid. But he didn't think she'd hate him still.

The Professor held the door to the workshop open. Unlike the rest of the building, it was illuminated with electric light that made the whole place glow warmly. He'd interrupted them in the midst of work, he could tell. Two workbenches were set up side by side, with an overhead lamp brought down close to the surface of the bench to provide enough light to work by. Upon one of the slabs was a set of long metal legs with claw-like feet attached. Upon the other arms, covered in synthflesh and padding to simulate skin and muscle, but he could see the metal ring with attachments just above the elbow joints to hook onto the rest of the upper arm.

There was no part of the room that was not lit up, so it only took Raoul a scant second's perusal to spy the thing the limbs were destined to hook into - a man's torso and head, sitting upright in an armchair. It was a huge construction, even limbless as it was and there was something wrong with the head itself. Half of it was a well-formed male face, but the other...eyeless, with melted flesh and broken bone, hideous and malformed. Raoul fancied he'd seen much in his life, but he could not suppress a shudder of disgust at the sight. He rallied, however. Horrible as it looked, it must only a broken Automaton. At least he assumed as much, until it spoke.

"Who is that? Why's he here?" 

The voice boxes of most Automata were a bit tinny to listen to, the accent always a practiced Parisien blandness. There was a lovely resonance to this voice, as though it issued from a real throat. And the accent was distinctly northern. 

Christine hurried over to it, laying a comforting hand on the shoulder; though the figure was sitting, they were nearly eye to eye. "That is Raoul, don't worry, he is a friend."

A friend. Not _my_ friend, but at least she hadn't said he was the enemy.

Still keeping her hand on the creature's shoulder, Christine turned to Raoul and said firmly, "This is Erik. I...came upon him one evening. He needed my help."

"He's a man, then?" Raoul asked, unable to keep the incredulous tone from his voice. The creature - the man - Erik, looked away from him so that Raoul was staring at the obliterated side of his face. The disgust was back, for the longer Raoul looked, the more damage he could see - pieces of the skull looked as though they had been flayed off and badly patched with synthflesh. The nose was gone. The mouth was intact enough to allow for speech, but the left-handside pulled oddly away from the center of the face, scarred and curling up, as though set in a permanent sneer. Ghastly. "What...what happened to him?"

The Professor interjected then, providing a brief history. He had been an aviateur in the Aéronautique, until his plane was gunned down by the Prussians. He did not remember much of the crash, only the sensation of heat and tremendous pain. The rest was a blur of dark rooms and masked faces. Thrumming machines. One of his artificial lungs had been punctured between the crash and his coming into Christine's care. Someone tried to fix it, at least to run a breathing apparatus through his chest. The Professor gestured carelessly to a triangular piece of metal with a long piece of coiled tubing, like a snake, lying in a tray. Raoul noticed the brownish stains of dried blood crusting the thing. The mask was not an adequate substitute, it did not provide enough oxygen to the body, which started to break down. And, the Professor theorized, accounted for the fogginess of Erik's memory.

The creature, Erik, kept his gaze averted the whole time, his head hanging down. Raoul had a sickly feeling in his stomach, sure the Professor timed his arrival precisely so that Erik would not be able to run away. All the while the Professor puffed away on his pipe, casually as though he was delivering an anatomy lesson.

At the conclusion of the tale, Raoul swallowed hard. Pushing aside his instinctive revulsion, he approached Erik, cautiously laying a hand on his right shoulder, where the damage to his body was the most severe. Erik started slightly and looked up at him with his remaining eye. It regarded him warily.

"I was in La Royale, myself," Raoul said quietly. Trying to express his sympathy while keeping the bad memories at bay. "My ship was torpedoed, I...anyway. Thank you. For your service."

So many young men had drowned, panicking, thinking the boat would sink. They jumped into the icy cold water. Raoul clung to the hull, too afraid to jump, too afraid to move. His cowardice was his reward; he survived long enough to be rescued.

Erik shifted his shoulder under Raoul's hand, puling away from the touch.

"Don't..._don't_," he muttered darkly, back to looking at the floor. "I was conscripted. I'm not...I didn't want...I never imagined that they'd..."

He trailed off and there was silence in the workshop. Raoul did not try to speak to him again, not even to express sympathy. There were things that no words could adequately express or explain. Feelings and wounds that ran too deep to sustain repeated prodding.

The Professor beckoned Raoul over to the work bench while Christine crouched by Erik's side, speaking softly and soothingly to him. Raoul couldn't make out anything distinct, but he thought he heard something that sounded like his own name. 

"Look at that," the Professor said, handing Raoul a magnifying glass and indicating a ball that attached one of the knee joints on the leg. Raoul didn't even need the magnifying glass to see the simplified coat of arms of the Empire stamped into the surface. Under magnification, tiny letters were visible. L.E.F. Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

_For whom?_ Raoul thought, mind putting the pieces together as he set the magnifying glass aside. "Augmentation is illegal."

"And yet," the Professor nodded toward the collection of metal - steel, probably. Strong, durable. Expensive and rationed during wartime. Except to the military. "If you'd be so kind as to take up the glass once more, there is one more thing that might interest you about the composition of the joinings."

This time he motioned Raoul toward the metal plate at the top of the arms. This was a much more complicated contrivance, for it had to hook into an attachment joined to living flesh. There were intricate wires, hooks, pressure gauges, but in the center it bore a maker's mark. A small shield, with a lion, rampant. The magnifying glass fell from Raoul's hand and hit the floor, but it did not break.

A family crest. _His_ family's crest.

"Your father is a shrewd and industrious man," the Professor said, but the words were not a compliment. "We already knew he had investments in munitions manufacturing. But I believe this proves he's gone into business for himself in this capacity."

Raoul shook his head, backing away from the tiny brand. 

"No," he said in disbelief. "_No._ It can't be. My father would never - he hates Augmentation. The whole family's against it. He would _never._"

Memories once again threatened to overtake him in a haze of pain. He recalled a twelve-year-old boy, skinny and knock-kneed in a sailor suit, tears in his eyes, begging his father to call a surgeon to replace his mother's lungs. Remembered his firm refusal. He wouldn't even hear him, listen to him. His mind was made up before Raoul even finished the question. 

Up until that point he'd never known what it was not to have a voice. To shout and shout until you were hoarse, to plead and cry and _rage_ against a person or institution that not only wouldn't listen, but did not even seem to care about the cause you triumphed. Now it had become the work of his life, but nothing since compared to that first, worst blow. 

"Perhaps," Professor Valerius acknowledged. "He has changed his mind."

Raoul opened his mouth to object - _the man put his wife of twenty-five years in the ground, yet you think he's mutilating soldiers on the government's behalf?_

The Professor seemed to anticipate him.

"Money," he remarked mildly. "Power. Can be...keen motivating forces. For a man such as your father. Do you agree?"

Despite what Philippe thought, there was a part of Raoul that still cared - perhaps still loved - his father. But he was too old and had seen to much to believe he was worthy of that love, even the thimbleful tucked away at the back of his heart.

"Yes," Raoul admitted, shakily. "But...what is all this? We're - the empire is in peacetalks. All the papers - "

"The papers know what they are permitted to know," the Professor knocked the ashes from his pipe into the fire. The whole room smelt of vanilla; sickly sweet it seemed to Raoul, it turned his stomach. "If the war is ending, then a great of money and time and secrecy is going to waste. If, however, there is a renewal of hostilities - ah, this is pure conjecture. Better to say nothing more about it. But this is what you're here for."

"Raoul has nothing to do with them."

Christine spoke now, finally leaving Erik's side to stand by the Professor. She looked exhausted, but angry. Still so angry.

"He's cut ties with his family - he never sees them," she said hotly. "This has all been a tremendous waste of time. You ought to send him away."

"Is that true?" the Professor asked Raoul curiously. "You never see _any_ of them?"

_It's true_, Raoul wanted to insist._ I haven't so much as written a letter to one of them in years!_

But that would be a lie. He could be an able liar, when he had to be. But he couldn't summon the will, just now. Not in front of Christine. After everything, he simply couldn't lie to her.

"I saw Philippe, recently," he admitted. "We had coffee. He was blathering on about my going to the Opera with him."

The Professor smiled. "You should go. And speak to him. Tell him you want to mend bridges, perhaps traipse about the old manse - "

"No!" Raoul exclaimed, startling himself with his own vicious reply. "Absolutely not! I won't step foot in that damned house. You go too far, Professor."

The calm of the Professor's demeanor never changed.

"Very well," he conceded. "Then ask your brother directly. If he knows anything about your father's business contracts. Specifically, a Project Lazarus."

"Philippe won't," Raoul shook his head. "He won't know anything, I mean. The Comte has always kept his business dealings close to the chest, he probably won't know anything. Nor will he care. Augments and Automata mean nothing to him. All Philippe cares about is chasing a bit of skirt and going to the theatre."

A strange look came over the Professor's face. A knowingness that immediately smoothed into studied blankness, but Raoul had dealt with him too many times to be thrown off by it. 

"What?" he asked, narrowing his eyes. "Do you know something I don't?"

"I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss your brother," the Professor said neutrally. "Anyway, he is our best option for further inquiry. Unless you'd like to pop round your sister's for tea and biscuits?"

For a minute, Raoul was silent, considering. He could be honest with himself and admit that...he had been tempted by Philippe's invitation. His brother's colorful explanation of the play reminded Raoul of the stories he used to tell him, when he was young. Strange that a boy as hale and vital as Philippe should have such a love of books, but he did. He could spend hours reading. He tried to impart that same love in Raoul, but it never managed to stick. Raoul didn't care for books, he only ever wanted Philippe to tell him stories. To have that again, now...it had awakened a tenderness for his brother that Raoul thought was long asleep. He _did_ want to see him again. 

"I don't think you'll get what you want from this," Raoul told the Professor honestly. "But I'll go. I'll speak to him."

"Very good," the Professor nodded. Turning to Christine he asked, "Shall we proceed with our work?"

She nodded and replaced her goggles; Raoul had the distinct impression that he was being dismissed. 

A voice did stop him in his progress to the door, but it wasn't Christine or the Professor.

"What are they putting on?" Erik asked from his chair on the far side of the room. Raoul turned back to look at him; the good side of his face was oddly wistful.

"_Robert le Diable_," he said simply. The misshapen mouth smiled very briefly; it was gone so quick, Raoul thought he imagined the expression.

"Yes, of course," Erik sighed. "There's a ballet of dancing ghost nuns, that must be something to behold. When I...Sometimes I could see the dancers practicing in the windows. I wondered what they were dancing to."

Yes, Philippe told him that already. Raoul looked at Erik consideringly, then said, "I'll be sure to tell you all about it when I come back to give my report to the Professor."

The good side of Erik's face looked surprised. "Will you?"

Raoul nodded. Smiled, briefly, at him and promised, "I will. Might be the most interesting thing I'll come back with...but I'll do my best to learn what I can."

Erik did not smile again, his gaze was back on the floor, but he murmured, "Thank you."

Raoul tipped his cap toward him, then gave Christine and the Professor a quick good-bye, which they did not return, being preoccupied with work. He left the shop through the front door, taking care to secure the latch behind him.


	8. Control

Philippe wasn't sure what he'd done, what in his address, or tone, or looks might have pierced through to Raoul's gentler nature, but he accepted his invitation to the opera. What was more, he'd accepted his invitation to come to the house beforehand, which was nothing short of miraculous.

"Will the Comte be home?" was his only question. Philippe assured him that their father was not expected at home all evening. The Comte's business and political connections had been calling him out of the house in the evenings for longer and longer stretches. Philippe knew little about it, only privy to off-handed comments if they passed on the stairs. Lunch with this steel magnate. Supper with Minister-So-and-So, etc. Father always played his cards close to his chest.

_'You'll have to tell me something of your business eventually,'_ Philippe remarked at various times over the past few years._ 'If I'm to inherit the lot, eventually.'_

The Comte would smile grimly and ask that his son please not anticipate his demise quite so ardently. _'Though...I would so like to see your mother again,'_ he would conclude wistfully. And that put an end to any further discussion of the matter, however pragmatic and practical such thing might be. 

Still, such an eventuality was likely years away. The Comte was no longer a young man, but not quite in his dotage either. His mental faculties were sharp as ever - sharper, he would insist, than when he was young. Experience was a valuable teacher. And he felt he was now less likely to make reckless decisions out of emotion.

Naturally he never said aloud that Philippe's state of being was a reckless decision. Even at Maman's most distressed, the Comte never bent enough to admit error or wrongdoing on his part. But he never spoke of Philippe's Augmentation openly, not even when the procedure was still legal. Now, if it was referenced, it was obliquely. Through inference and innuendo. Whether that was calculated to make Philippe feel more normal or less, he was never entirely certain - and not sure that he wanted to be at that.

But tonight normality would be easy to feign. He'd don his evening clothes and spend the evening with his brother. Raoul had been young when he'd gone into the service and not been out and about much in society before. Once upon a time he'd been shy and diffident, hiding behind Philippe or speaking only to their sisters. Now...well, he was quite the opposite. 

Regardless, however he behaved, Philippe was only thrilled to be seeing him. Embarrassingly so, though none but his valet had caught on. Apart from the novelty of spending a night out with his younger brother for the first time in their shared history, the relief was unspeakable. For at least five hours, Philippe would be with him and thus have the assurance of Raoul's safety. That was a priceless gift. 

Raoul was punctual, though he let himself in through the servants' entrance, which caused Robert to roll his eyes at the young master's prince-cum-pauper routine. 

It had been years since he'd been in the house. Since a fight with their father left them both red-faced and hoarse from shouting. Philippe remembered every detail of that awful night, for he'd observed it all. Both of them were beyond the point of placid reasoning and he could not interfere in any case. It was about Raoul's newly-discovered pet cause: the rights of Augments and the plight of those put out by Automation. The Comte argued for progress within reason; Automation was a boon, Augmentation was a sin. Raoul called him greedy, cruel. The Comte called Raoul foolish and short-sighted.

Philippe said nothing to either of them. To take Raoul's side was to deny his father. To take his father's side was to deny himself. And so he stood by fingertips gripping his own upper arms so tightly he left bruises on his flesh. 

When Raoul cursed his father and stormed from the room, Philippe had followed him. Spoke to him soothingly, tried to tell him to go to bed, to sleep on it, that he ought not make rash decisions when tempers were riding high...

All to no avail. Philippe wished his brother had railed at him, as he had his father. He wished he'd sworn at him, even struck him. But he just kept walking toward the door as though he couldn't hear him. As though nothing he said mattered. As though he wasn't there at all.

Philippe felt like crossing the distance across the kitchen and embracing him, but held himself back. Raoul seemed reluctant to even shake his hand that day in the cafe and smothering him in affection would only push him further away, Philippe was quite sure. It was almost easy to stay the impulse; control was guiding principle of his life. Control of his body, his emotions, his impulses. The heart might want what it wanted, but Philippe's will was stronger than his heart. It had to be. 

"You came," Philippe said, standing a good distance away. He tried to imbue warmth into his voice that could suffice for human touch.

"You didn't think I would?" Raoul shot back, defensive at first, but his tone softened as he added, "I suppose you've every reason to doubt me."

"I didn't doubt _you_," Philippe said honestly. Perhaps too honestly. Perhaps too openly for he hastily added, "Just your timeliness." 

"Will sir want a bath?" Robert interjected, though it really was no question. Raoul's hair was greasy under his cap and his fingernails were grimy where they poked out of the ends of his gloves. 

"I rather expect so," Philippe said before Raoul could reply. A twitch at the corner of his mouth (at least, Philippe perceived such, it was hard to tell under all that hair), made it seem as though Raoul was going to refuse the offer of a bath, but he seemed to think better of it.

"That will be fine," he said, glancing at Philippe, already attired for the evening. "Unless we'll be late? Since you're so concerned about _timeliness_."

Philippe accepted the teasing graciously and shook his head, "Not materially so. I thought we might go to supper with some of my crowd, but we'll make the second act curtain - "

"No!"

The vehemence of his response took Philippe off-guard. He assumed, when Raoul accepted his invitation to the Opera, he accepted all that came with such a thing...then again, he had to remind himself that Raoul never had a proper evening out before. He did not know the rules, the accepted course of things. And, if he was truly honestly with himself, he should have known that his brother had no taste for it.

And yet appearances must be maintained. Like his father, Philippe was not prepared to apologize or admit he had been wrong in fashioning their plans for the evening. Control, again.

"I beg your pardon?" he asked, one eyebrow raising.

_Let me take you to supper,_ Philippe's mind insisted silently, even as he bade his tongue be still. _You're too thin and there are shadows under your eyes. Let me look after you, won't you?_

Raoul's eyes cut to the side, almost as though he was seeking an escape. His mouth gave another odd twist and he raised his eyes to Philippe in an apologetic manner, looking up at him through his eyelashes as he had done when he was small and thought he was going to be in trouble. 

But the childishness of his expression was gone, replaced by that irksome smirk he so often favored. 

"I'd rather not make small-talk with your cronies, if it's all the same to you," Raoul said dismissively. Then added with a touch more sincerity, "I did agree to spend the evening with _you_, eh? You're a pleasanter fellow alone than the lot of them put together, I don't mind telling you."

"They aren't so bad," he offered, nodding to Robert to indicate that he should get around to drawing that bath. "Your trouble is you talk politics with everyone even before you get to how-do-you-do."

Raoul smiled at him. A real smile, a genuine smile, he thought, and Philippe smiled back. 

"And _your_ trouble," Raoul shot back teasingly, "is you don't talk politics at all. If you did you'd whittle that fine group of comrades you call friends down to a manageable lot. It's easy to cultivate a vast array of friends if you don't really _talk_ about anything. There's no chance of falling out that way."

That was true. And Philippe did maintain a large network of acquaintances, though he would hesitate to call them friends. To have a friend involved sharing confidences. Letting another person get close. To be vulnerable. Come to think of it, Philippe was not certain he'd ever had a friend in the whole of his life. Well, with one exception; he hoped he would have the chance to introduce her.

"You and I talk," Philippe pointed out. "And disagree, even. But we've never had a falling out that I've been aware of.

"I hope," he added, into the silence that followed that pronouncement. "That we never do."

Raoul looked up at him again. His tongue briefly flashed, wetting his lips nervously. His right hand twitched as though he wanted to reach for him - but he let it drop to his side and said only, "How about that bath, eh?"

With Robert caught up attending to Raoul, Philippe was left to conclude his evening's ablutions on his own. He was dressed, shaved, and his hair was neatly combed, so there was precious little to do. He put a fresh flower in his buttonhole and splashed a little extra cologne on, a scent Gigi said she was fond of. The addition of white kid gloves completed his ensemble; he would not don his cloak and hat until he was ready to depart. 

The evening might still be salvaged. So what if they did not attend supper? They could still go to the Opera. Enjoy themselves as the music and spectacle gave them something to focus on and speak of that had nothing to do with family or politics, or old grudges and past hurts. They could speak as _brothers_, at least, and not enemy combatants in some secret war Raoul was waging.

Perhaps Raoul would permit a late supper, just the two of them. Though, the two might become three if Gigi accompanied them. Raoul could find nothing to object to in her, Philippe was sure. She was beautiful, yes, but kind and sharp-witted. He hoped they would like each other.

A sharp rap upon the door roused Philippe from his thoughts. 

"Sir?" It was Robert. 

"Is he ready?" Philippe asked, consulting his watch. He was a touch surprised; he thought it would take at least this long for Raoul to finish washing the dirt of the streets off his person.

"He dismissed me a quarter of an hour ago, sir," Robert said stiffly. "I did as he wished, but considered it my duty to help him dress. I knocked upon the bath, but there was no answer. I opened the door and...he was not there, sir. I do not believe he availed himself of the bath after all, but he was not in his rooms. The clothes I laid out were untouched."

Before Philippe could ask where he was, Robert plowed on.

"Forgive me, sir, if I overstep my bounds," he said, his eyes steely, though there was precious little to read in the expression on his face. "But I believe he made free to let himself into your the Comte's private study."

Dreadful understanding seized Philippe's heart at once, even as his mind rallied against it. Without a word to his valet, Philippe stalked off toward his father's study, the blood rushing in his veins, pounding in his ears._ Tickticktickticktick._

He did not pause outside the door, he twisted the handle hard on its hinges. A scrape and grind of metal distantly registered, but he was too focused on the sight before him to mark it. 

Raoul was standing behind their father's desk, papers strewn about, on the floor, in his hand. 

What a _fool_ he was! What a fool he had been to assume that he'd managed to convince Raoul to come see him, to pass the evening with him out of brotherly affection. 

The threads of control frayed thin, but Philippe had sense enough not to shout.

"What are you _doing?_" he hissed, though he fancied he knew well enough. "What the devil are you doing in here?"

Raoul's mouth fell open. His skin, under the grime, was very pale. 

"Philippe, I - "

"Don't - don't!" Philippe held up a hand to stop him speaking. Lies, he was sure. All of it was lies. How _could_ he have been so damnably naive? "So, that's what you come for, is it? A bit of convenient house-breaking? How dare you? How _dare_ you?"

"I...I..." Raoul, for once, was at a loss for words. Then. "Th-that door was _locked_."

Philippe, in his anger, misunderstood. "So you broke in, then? What were you hoping to - no. Don't answer. I don't want to hear about it. Get out."

Resolve came over Raoul's face as he surged forward, papers in his hands. "Listen to me, Philippe, this is...do you know what this is? Project Lazarus! Has the old man ever told you about Project Lazarus? If you knew - you're a _good_ man, if you knew -"

Nonsense. All nonsense. All _lies_. And Philippe would not stand being made a fool of any longer. 

"Get out!" he shouted, reaching out and wrenching the papers from Raoul's grip. They tore, scattering bits on the floor, joined quickly by the papers Philippe dashed from his own hands. "Get out! I can't stand to look at you."

For a second, Raoul's gaze flickered down to the fallen papers, as though he was of a mind to gather them up and make a break for it. If he had, Philippe wasn't sure what would have happened, all semblance of control would have been gone, surely. But he didn't. He straightened up and looked Philippe right in the eyes. There was contrition there, regret, which was the only thing that stayed Philippe's hands from seizing the back of his brother's old naval coat and throwing him bodily from the property himself. 

"I'm sorry," Raoul apologized, swallowing thickly. "I'm sorry I lied to you. I'll go. You'll never have to see me again."

He swept past him, giving his brother a large berth. Philippe's hands clenched to fists, knuckles straining at the leather on his gloves. Philippe was about to crouch, to right the desk, to erase any trace of his brother's having been there when Raoul spoke up from the doorway. 

"There are some things that are more important than the Opera, Philippe," he said softly. Then he was gone. This time no slamming of the door marked his exit. 

Philippe closed his eyes. Took a breath. And knelt on the floor to pick up the fallen papers. 

He was interrupted by Robert. 

"Sir. The coach has arrived," he said, almost apologetically. "Would you like me to send it away?"

Philippe began the process of reassembling the contents of his father's drawers, hoping against hope that he would not notice they had been rifled through. He hoped to God Raoul hadn't taken anything, but it was far too late to be certain. It hadn't even occurred to him to search his brother. What a _fool_ he'd been!

"No," Philippe said quietly. "I'll keep my engagements. You may go, Robert."

"I thought I might overstay my time this evening, sir," Robert said delicately. "And engage the services of a locksmith."

With a pointed look, Philippe finally took in the state of the door handle; nothing but a twisted piece of metal, bearing the impression of his own fingers, hanging limply out of the door.

_That door was locked,_ Raoul noted, but Philippe could not bring himself to panic over this. As his brother said, he would not see him again. There was nothing to fret over or explain. 

"Yes, please, if you don't mind Robert," Philippe said. He closed the drawers of the Comte's desk; he restored every paper he'd found, excepting those that had been torn when he ripped them from Raoul's hands. Those he folded up quite small. Robert asked no questions, even as he saw him do it. 

All he said was, "Let me fetch your hat and cloak."

Philippe tucked the papers into his wallet, which he stored away in an interior pocket of his jacket. He let Robert finish dressing him, murmured his thanks, and told the cab to take him directly to the Opera. He would not dine at his supper club tonight. He wasn't hungry, just at present. 

He made the first act curtain. Alone in his box, Philippe watched as the lead tenor was led astray by his corrupt father, then redeemed in the end by the love of a woman. He watched as Gigi took the stage, a dervish of silks and graceful limbs. And he applauded from the shadows, his hands a mechanical din amid the rest of the audience's approval.

If he wept at all, it went unseen and unheard and any trace was undetectable by the time he made his way to the dancers' lounge following the performance.

Gigi went to him at once, ignoring the other gentlemen who smiled and called after her, gently crying, _'Brava!'_ Her eyes were only for him.

She lay a gentle hand upon the lapels of his jacket, right over the place where his wallet and those awful papers were hidden away.

"No brother tonight?" she asked sympathetically, as though she'd assumed he would not come.

Philippe shook his head, took her hand and kissed it. "No. I'm afraid it's only the two of us. Can I tempt you with an offer of a very late supper?"

Gigi smiled a sad sympathetic smile and craned her neck up to kiss his cheek. "That sounds...perfect."

"Perfect," he echoed wanly, before he remembered himself. Philippe drew up, ramrod straight, smoothing his face into practiced neutrality. He tucked Sorelli's slim brown hand into the crook of his elbow and led her out of the Opera and all its glittering lights into the darkness of the streets.


	9. Break

To say that the Professor was displeased with Raoul would be an understatement. He was furious. A careful, controlled fury that revealed itself in his clipped speech, detached manner, and a conspicuous habit of rearranging his surgical instruments as he spoke.

"You were caught."

It was not a question, but Raoul responded as though it was. 

"I'll admit, I was reckless, but there wouldn't have been time after," he tried to explain, for once his confidence broken. He looked more and more like the frightened, desperate young man Christine met years ago that she felt herself feeling badly for him, despite everything that had passed since their fateful first meeting. "It was the valet - he's always lurking - "

"And you did not take this into account when you arrived?" the Professor asked, holding a scalpel to the light, squinting at it critically through his pince-nez. "You, who were specifically chosen because you know the household. You did not believe you would be watched? Or did you think yourself so quick and clever that logic does not apply to you?"

Raoul's eyes darted to the scalpel and he swallowed before he said, "I saw it - Project Lazarus, I saw the plans, I did take some of his papers with me - "

The scalpel hit the instrument tray with a sharp ringing sound.

"Simple theft - an incomplete, botched attempt at gathering information," the Professor said, pacing away and looking up at the heavens. The stars were invisible through the skylight, the lights from the city blotting them out in an electric haze. "Your little scraps are worse than useless."

"Worse than - " Raoul began, but the Professor silenced him at once, using his fingers to tick off all the ways Raoul disappointed him.

"Point the first," he said, as though Raoul was a disappointing student in his lecture hall, "the evidence you have gathered is incomplete. Point the second - you were _caught_, and if your father does not know what you have done now, he most certainly will by morning. Point the third - you have jeopardized our whole enterprise through your thoughtlessness. Everyone in this room is now at risk because of you. Give me one reason - one _very_ good reason, my young friend, why I ought not turn you over to the police myself and let your miserable, arrogant hide rot in a prison cell?"

Briefly, Raoul's face went white before he recovered himself. A grim knowingness overtook his countenance, vanishing any trace of the sincere boy Christine had known, leaving only the hardened man he'd become.

"Because I read more than I took," he said evenly. "Things I haven't told you. And you'll be doing yourself no favors giving me up before I've had the chance to tell you."

"There are ways of _making_ you tell me," the Professor said, glancing at his instrument tray.

"Of-of course," Raoul replied, a bit shakily, but still resolved. "Only, I know you, Professor Valerius. I've no doubt you'll turn me over to the gendarmerie - hell, I probably deserve it. But that isn't your way. You're not that sort of man."

For a tense minute, the two stared at one another, a silent battle of wills. All the while, Christine stood by, half concealed in the deep shadows of the workshop. It was she who broke the silence.

"What do you know?" she asked. "Tell me something. Something of value. Then we might decide what's best to be done with you."

His gaze was calm and steady, as though he'd anticipated her question.

"I know where your father is."

Christine was not the sort of girl who fainted; it did not do well to be easily overcome in her line of work. But she felt her knees quiver as she took an involuntary step toward him. "He is _alive_?"

Raoul nodded, almost too quickly. "Yes. There was a cable - received yesterday. He's being held at La Santé."

Christine inhaled sharply, "So close?"

Again, Raoul grimly nodded. "I'm so sorry, Lotte, if I'd known - "

"Stop," she held up a hand and turned away from him. "Don't call me that. Just tell me what you know."

Not much more than that, Raoul admitted. The cable did concern his being transferred to another place - either to some territory abroad or to a firing squad, it was unclear. But he was alive. That much he was certain of. 

Briefly, the Professor lost his composure. He removed his spectacles and passed a hand over his hair. Closing his eyes he seemed to confer silently with himself. Then he said, "All might not be lost as I feared. There is a hope...but it is dangerous..."

"I'll do anything."

Christine and Raoul spoke at the exact same time, almost in the exact same breath. They looked at one another, then away.

"No," the Professor spoke, to both of them, but he was looking at Christine. "No. You don't know the way, my dear. It is too dangerous. Despite your extraordinary gifts...this is too dangerous."

A hand went unconsciously to her throat and Christine frowned. "You must at least let me try. He is my _father_." 

"And my partner. And my friend," the Professor said. "No. Prison-breaking is not for you, my girl. You are more valuable elsewhere and your father would not think kindly of either of us if I let your talents be wasted in such a venture."

"Me, then," Raoul insisted. "You've already said you think I'm fit for nothing more than imprisonment. What better place for me than La Santé?"

The Professor smiled grimly at him. "She is too precious and you are too foolhardy. I shouldn't trust you with so important a task. No. It must be someone else."

"Who, then?" Christine asked, wracking her brain to think of their confederates. So many had gone underground since her father's arrest. The seizure of the man who so many considered untouchable in their cause had rattled both actors and sympathizers to their core. Few dared to express their desire for legal Augmentation openly; fewer still would break the law to advance the cause. Sorelli might, but though she could be the ears of their cause, prison-breaking seemed beyond her skill set. And Madame would not put herself so much at risk, not when she was the only source of support for her young daughter. 

"Why, our new friend," the Professor said simply. "We gave him his life, did we not? I would say it was time he repaid the favor."

Erik, Christine realized. He was talking about Erik.

It was true they had repaired his broken lungs and reattached his limbs, procured the synthflesh needed to cover the metal framework of his body, though restoration of the face was beyond even the Professor's considerable skill. He had expressed his gratitude quietly, but once he was able to amble about on his own, he seemed determined to stay well away from him. Sometimes Christine heard him from the shop below, at night, in the dark. It was not the wheeze and clank of broken machinery that alerted her to his presence now, but the halting strains of music; he was trying to teach his mechanical limbs to play the violin.

And the Professor wanted to conscript him into their cause. Something about it struck Christine as being wrong, though she couldn't put her finger on precisely why she should feel so. Were they not owed something?

"But Erik..." she began, unsure how she would end. "But Erik...he isn't one of us. He didn't...none of this was his choice."

"Yet nevertheless, here he is," the Professor said, a gleam that Christine was not fond of in his eye. "A true Augment. Stronger, sturdier, faster than an ordinary man. What all those in government claim to be so afraid of, yet as we've seen, they are the ones who made him what he is - or they began to, at least. Rather than, 'Lazarus, get up and walk,' they declare, 'Lazarus, get up and fight.' Do you see?"

If that argument wasn't sufficient to stopper her tongue, his next silenced her protests completely.

"He might be our only chance to get your father back."

Raoul spoke up then, shaking his head, "We don't know that he'll do it - he's a _man_, Professor. He has a choice. If we..._use_ him like this, are we any better than those who...resurrected him?"

The Professor sighed impatiently. "He lost the ability to choose his life for himself when they dragged his body off that battlefield. He will do this. What alternative is there? And every minute we waste debating morals is another minute we lose in retrieving one of our most valuable assets."

That spurred Christine to action.

"I'll tell him - I'll ask him," she amended, rushing out the workshop door. The slow, pained sounds of a violin being carefully played by unsure hands led her down to where he had sequestered himself in her family's apartment. Erik was kneeling on the floor, his back to the door. She saw his broad back and dark hair - it made her lose her nerve a bit, made her question her resolve to see him. A thing so strong and seemingly invulnerable, scratching out a simple church hymn, the way a child might.

"Erik?" 

He stopped playing, but did not turn to look at her. "That was the first piece I learned. I taught myself. No money for lessons, but I got the violin second-hand and taught myself to play by ear."

"Is it...coming back to you?" she asked. The violin seemed small in his hand and he held it so carefully. She was pleased for the care he took; it had been her father's.

He huffed a humorless laugh. "I know what to do. It's these hands that don't know."

Erik set the violin down and turned to look up at her from his position on the floor. The ruined half of his face, all fissures and crevices, was unremarkable to her now, after having been exposed to it so long, but he tried to keep that side angled away; she knew he avoided windows, and mirrors, anything reflective. Now that he'd laid the violin down, he even covered his hands with gloves so that he would not have to look at them. 

"I have to ask you," she said, remembering her purpose in coming. _Every minute we waste debating morals is another minute we lose._ "A favor."

The half of his face that still moved normally did so, frowning confusing overtaking the once-handsome features. "A favor? What can I possibly have to offer you?"

Christine explained, or at least tried to. Her father was alive. He was imprisoned. They knew where, had only just learned where tonight and it was imperative that they get him out_ tonight_. That they were counting on him to do that.

Erik was shaking his head, features strangely blank and expressionless. "No. I can't."

"Can't?" Christine asked, brows furrowing. "Of course you can! We know where to send you, how to get in - we've got tools to ease your way, and, you'll pardon me for saying so, but after they work that's been done on you, they'll have the devil's own time putting a dent in you. Please, it's our only chance!"

"I can't," he insisted, shoulders hunching. His eyes flickered to the violin and his fingers convulsed, as if he meant to seize it and use it as a shield. "I wouldn't know what I was doing. I'm not cut out for this - "

"Of course you are," Christine insisted. "You've been a soldier! A pilot! You're _made_ for this!"

He reacted as if she'd slapped him. Erik's face crumpled, both sides now drawn and contorted; for a horrible instant, she thought he was about to cry. Sorrow and rage fought in the trembling of his shoulders to the clenching of his fists to the tears she saw well up in his blue eye. Rage won out, but only just.

"I never wanted to be!" he shouted, getting up now, rising to his full and intimidating height. Christine held her ground, unafraid. She sensed that even if he dealt her a blow or wrapped his impossibly strong fingers around her throat, she had just wounded him far more than he could wound her. "I wanted...to make music. To perform. Make people happy, make something _beautiful_. If I had money, if I could've bought my way out and put some other poor sod in my place, don't you think I would have? I'm not made for fighting and war and all that _shit_. I never was! It nearly _killed_ me."

He turned away, one gloved hand going to his brow, covering his face. "It _should_ have killed me."

Christine's heart clenched in her chest and her stomach dropped. All the pride she'd taken in repairing and rebuilding Erik, piece by piece...it never occurred to her that he might not have wanted it.

Again, her hand found her throat. The voicebox that chimed away replaced her damaged vocal chords and made her produce the most beautiful, wonderful sound. She was better now than she'd been before, just as Papa promised. It had never seemed a burden or hindrance, only a wonderful gift, kept hidden because an ignorant populace would not understand. 

She thought she'd understood Erik; but now she realized she had no idea. A man who wanted to create beauty, encased in a shell that was made to destroy. God, what a fool she'd been. A thoughtless, heartless fool.

Christine approached him tentatively. He'd not moved from where he'd turned away. It seemed Sorrow had overtaken Rage because she heard a shuddering breath and realized he was weeping. At first, she only pressed her brow against his back. Then her arms rose, slowly, to encircle his waist. He remained still.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, realizing that no one had apologized yet for what they'd done to him. How they'd used him. How much they'd destroyed him. And here she was thinking that he _owed_ them. What a horror she was. A perfect horror. "I'm _so_ sorry, Erik."

One of his gloved hands gently settled on top of hers. He didn't say anything, but she thought - she hoped - he'd forgiven her. 

Christine's own eyes were wet when she pulled away and she hastily dried them on her sleeve.

"I had no right to demand this of you," she said thickly. "It was wrong of me. I'll tell the Professor - "

"No," Erik shook his head, his voice hoarse. He closed his blue eye and took a steadying breath. "I'll go."

"You don't have to - " she began, but he cut her off.

"I ought to, though. I know how much your father means to you," he swallowed and looked away, speaking his next to the floor. "There was one good thing that came out of that damnable war for me. One good...person. I understand how you feel. I do."

The sorrow and longing in his voice was palpable. Christine lay a hand on his arm and peered up at the damaged side of his face. "Was she very pretty?"

Erik smiled a sad, lopsided smile. "Oh, yes. He was. I'll get your father for you, if I can. No one should have someone they love taken from them the way he was taken from you. That's something worth fighting for, more than control of the land, sea, and sky."

Christine took hold of his gloved right hand, brought it to her mouth and kissed it. "Thank you."

"Well, don't thank me yet," Erik said, a little slyly. A glimmer of the man he had been under the warped mask of what he was made to be. "I haven't done anything yet."

Raoul perhaps over-explained his task, but Erik patiently listened to the instructions he was given - weaknesses in the building, the regular patterns of the guards, where they thought M. Daaé was most likely to be found. 

The Professor had only one piece of advice: "If you find yourself in danger, _get out_. You are highly valuable to us. Gustav would understand."

At the word 'valuable,' Erik gave a little shudder that only Christine noticed. She did not embrace him again before he left, but as she handed him the radio communicator, she squeezed his free hand and tried to put all her feelings - her fear, anticipation, and gratitude - into that touch. 

"The radio's shit at long distances," Raoul informed Erik as Christine let him go. "Still. Better than nothing, eh?"

Erik gave a grim smile as he slipped the communicator into a coat pocket. His gaze, at least in his human eye, was very far-away. "I thought I'd had done with this."

The Professor deliberately misunderstood, "I'm sure it'll come back to you. Like riding a bicycle."

"Or playing the violin," Christine offered, trying to be helpful. She smiled up at him, but Erik's expression reverted to studied indifference. 

"Take care," Raoul said, offering his hand. Erik didn't take it; it was as though he hadn't heard him. Instead, without another word of encouragement or concern, he left them standing in the dark.

Raoul let his hand drop, his shoulders drooped. "I wish - "

"Get some coffee brewing, won't you, Raoul?" the Professor requested. "Make yourself useful."

There was a flash of genuine hurt in Raoul's face, but it was gone in a trice - like Erik, he knew how to school his features into a blank. And, like Erik, his military training came back quick.

"Yes, sir," he said. It was a wonder he didn't salute.

"I'll help you," Christine offered and Raoul was slower to cover his astonishment that she was willing to spend time with him. "You brew it too dark, it gives me a stomachache."

Regardless of the admonishment, he seemed less beaten-down than he had. She didn't know why she felt the need to show him any kindness; hadn't he botched his mission? But he'd given them the means to find her father. He'd brought her hope. God, she was staring to sound like Erik: love, hope, virtues worth fighting for. Hadn't this originally been about justice?

Silently the two walked around each other, an awkward dance they'd once known the steps to as they circled one another in the kitchen, finding the coffee tin, setting the water to heating. 

"Maybe one day we'll laugh," Christine offered as the pot burbled away. "The day you were undone by a valet."

Raoul didn't laugh. "It wasn't the valet. I lied to the Professor. It was Philippe who found me."

Christine looked up sharply. "Philippe? Damn it, all. We really will have the gendarmerie breathing down our necks come daybreak. It's a wonder they're not here already."

Just as she was thinking about what to take, where to go, how to plot their next move, Raoul spoke and sent her thoughts scattering like birds.

"He broke through the door. The bolt. It was locked. I wasn't careless - reckless, sure, but not careless. It's an iron bolt. And he broke through it like it was a tin can."

She understood what he was saying immediately. But she couldn't believe it.

"No," Christine shook her head. "Philippe? Augmented? Absolutely not. You'd...you'd have to have known, wouldn't you?"

Raoul sat heavily at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. "I thought...but there's no other answer, is there? I've never seen a sign, but he's always...buttoned up. Covered up. Straight-laced. Forgive me, but _boring_. And he's not political."

His fingers grasped his hair, knuckles white. "How can it be? All these years, my father fighting to keep Augmentation illegal. He wouldn't even use it when it was legal. When my mother was failing. And Philippe, his little doppelganger. I thought him the same. I remember, he _told_ me - they couldn't. Couldn't _ever_. It wasn't right. That Augments were against the natural order, that Maman would hate us and hate _herself_ if we preserved her life through those means. How could he speak that way about _himself_?"

Christine thought he had the answer right there. It was still astonishing. No less so in the wake of the revelation that the Comte himself was dealing in Augmentation with the very government that made the practice illegal. War made strange bedfellows. 

"I could believe my father dabbled in Augmentation for gain," Raoul continued, with a bitter laugh. He lowered his hands and looked bleakly at Christine. "He's shrewd, but I can believe his moralizing could extend to his own blood and no farther. Now I know it's not even that. He was willing to Augment his heir, it seems, but not his wife."

Christine crept closer to him. Hesitantly, her hand sought his hair and she carded her fingers through the dark blonde locks; they wanted washing. Her fingertips trailed past his ear down to his neck. "Don't think about it. You can't know what he's thinking. Don't try. You'll drive yourself mad."

Raoul laughed hollowly. "I feel half-mad already. When your father - forgive me. I have no right."

Perhaps not. But Christine would grant him grace in this. "Go on."

"When your father was taken," Raoul said, "I...felt so _helpless_. I haven't felt that way since I lost my mother. I was so...angry."

"You're always angry."

"Not always," Raoul countered, looking up at her. "Not...not _always_."

She remembered gentle touches, sweet kisses, and whispered longings.

"No," she conceded. "Not always." 

Raoul sighed, leaning into her touch. She did not pull away. War made strange bedfellows, after all. "It should be me who's going after him. I couldn't protect him. Protect you. I should at _least_ get the chance to bring him home to you."

"You botched it," Christine said bluntly. She didn't stop touching him. Didn't pull away or shout or cry. She didn't mean to be cruel. Only it was what it was. "The Professor doesn't trust you."

Raoul raised a hand and caught her wrist with it. "And you? Do you trust me?"

"It's been a long time," Christine replied honestly. "It...takes time. But I can learn again, I think."

"Like riding a bicycle?" Raoul replied with a half-smile, a teasing little smirk that she'd always loved.

"Or playing the violin," she said. She slid her fingers from his grasp. "Coffee's ready."

It wasn't forgiveness. Not yet. But it was a step closer.

They finished the pot and set another to brewing later in the night. The three of them agreed they'd sit by the radio in shifts so the others could sleep, but no one went to bed. They sat huddled around, listening for Erik's progress on the other side of the city.

Raoul was right - the reception was shit. Once or twice they managed to communicate clearly with him, but all was lost when he got into the prison proper. Hours passed since his last communication.

"He'll be back soon," Raoul said, eyeing the clock on the wall for the time. Three o'clock. Christine wished she could be so optimistic. But an hour passed. And then another. And there was no sound of an incoming transmission.

But then, just as the sky started to lighten and they were feeling the icy fingers of hopelessness bow their spines and nod their heads, they heard the sound of heavy footfalls upon the stairs. Christine was up like a shot, unbolting the door, but her flurry of excitement turned first to confusion, then heartbreak, for the figure Erik had tucked over one shoulder was not her father, but a dark-haired young man, a stranger to her and to all of them. 

Erik's first words were an apology. 

"I'm sorry, Christine," he said, a horrible mirror of her words to him earlier in the night. "But he was gone when I got there."

"Gone?" she asked, desperate. "Gone where?"

But she already knew. They already knew.

"Trial," Erik replied, confirming their suspicions. "They convicted him of treason. The sentence is execution."


	10. Reckoning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warning**: For references to **physical torture** and **suicide.**

Daaé was gone. They'd come to get him in the wee hours and Dalir was abandoned - not alone, though. No, he prayed for peace and solitude, but none came. Only the crack of the whip. The drone of voices, so alike they might have been Automata, but so attuned to cruelty, he knew they were not.

_"Where'd you take it?" "Where'd you go?" "Where's it gone?" "Chopped up for scrap?" "Sold?" "Tell us and it'll go easier for you."_

He told them nothing more than he was permitted to tell them as an officer in service of the country. Dalir Mazandarani. Sergent in the Aéronautique. 

It was then, when he insisted on stubbornly clinging to a rank that had been taken from him, that they dropped the whip and started using their fists. It all got a bit hazy after that.

The crunch of bone. An aborted scream. "_Dear God, what is that thing - " _

It took him a second to realize that those weren't his bones crunching. That wasn't his voice screaming. All around was silence, with the exception of labored breathing - again, not his own.

And then he was sensible of being tenderly lifted. Didn't matter how careful the arms were that held him everything hurt and he moaned or shrieked or cried out and a voice murmured.

"I'm sorry."

Dalir's eyes were too swollen and bloodied to open, but he knew that voice. That voice used to sing to him. It still did, in his dreams. 

Through bloody teeth and split lips he tried to ask, 'Who are you?', but they were on the move, he and the Voice and the pain was all he could focus on. Broken ribs. Stinging in his back. Pounding in his head. 

His position shifted and he was brought closer up against...a chest? For the breadth and strength of it, it was like being cradled by a wall of granite. But his head fell against something that might have been a shoulder and his swollen nose caught a scent that was as familiar to him as the voice. Sweat and warm skin and hot metal. Reminded him of blue skies and icy rivers. Despite the pain, he burrowed closer and breathed it in and sighed, heavy and exhausted. 

Whatever this was, this wall, this Voice, these arms, they wouldn't do him a harm. 

Feebly, Dalir brought one arm up to hang limply round the thick neck he'd embraced a dozen times. A hundred times, counting his dreams. 

Maybe this was a dream. Maybe they'd beaten all the sense out of him and all that was left to him was his dreams. Wasn't so bad. Not at all.

As though it was a dream, Dalir pressed his lips against the warm neck that smelled like home, leaving a bloody smear in his wake.

"Sing to me," he murmured, slurred, tongue thick and clumsy. 

The movement stopped and as the stillness descended, Dalir managed to pry open one swollen eye, peered through the bloody crust that formed on his eyelashes and dimly saw his face, shadowed in the light of the moon and the streetlamps, but still _his_ face. "Erik."

The grip around him tightened slightly, then slackened again, quickly, nervously. 

"Shh," Erik urged him, keep his head tilted up, into the darkness, not looking down. "Close your eyes. Close your eyes, Dalir, and I'll...I'll sing, if you'd like."

"'Course I would," Dalir would have smiled but for the pain in his head. He did as he was told, though. Closed his eyes. Waited. "You've got a beautiful voice. Best sound in the world."

There was a noise like a sob, quickly stifled. They were on the move again, there was the pain of being jostled and moved about, but with the pain came the Voice and Dalir didn't mind so much. 

_"Ô, nuit enchanteresse,  
_ _Divin ravissement,_  
_Ô, souvenir charmant,  
_ _Folle ivresse, doux rêve..."_

Yes, yes. That's what it was. A dream. A mad dream...

Blackness overtook him then, and Dalir knew no more until he awoke in a dimly-lit chamber. He knew at once that it wasn't La Santé, the walls were made of wood and plaster, not stone and an electric lamp buzzed quietly in the corner; when he was afforded light, La Santé used oil. 

A stranger was sitting in a chair, evidently napping. Dalir did not recognize his face, half hidden by a sandy beard. He wore a dark blue coat, not the uniform of the prison guards, but there was no telling whether he was friend or foe. Dalir suspected the latter. Months of fearing the chase and imprisonment made him wary, though if he'd been delivered into some fresh hell, this particular devil did not seem so fearsome; he slept with his head tipped back and mouth gaping open, rather comically. There was no gun or rod at the ready. The only thing he had handy was a book on the table by the lamp, laid idly down, pages pressed upon the wooden table. The door was to the right of the table, Dalir wouldn't have to pass him to get to it, but the sleeping stranger was close enough to grab him if he tried.

It was only after he took stock of his surroundings that Dalir realized he could open his eyes. And, as he gingerly raised himself up on his elbows, though he was stiff and sore all over, there wasn't as much pain as he might have expected. 

What he didn't account for was the wheezing springs of the mattress groaning underneath him; he'd been sleeping on pallets for so long he'd forgotten how ordinary people slept. 

The man in the chair jerked into consciousness, rubbing his eyes like a child and peering blearily at Dalir through them.

"Oh, Sergent!" he said, no mocking, no trace of malice in his voice. "You're awake. Good, good. How do you feel?"

It was the first time anyone had asked after his well-being in a _long_ time. Dalir didn't know whether to be touched or wary. 

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Raoul," the stranger said promptly, rising from the chair and offering a hand to shake. He lowered it to his side when Dalir only stared at it. "I'm...you're...how much do you remember?"

_I remember Gustav Daaé being dragged out of the cell like he was a dog or lower. But he didn't curse the guards or complained. He smiled at me. All warm and fatherly. As if to say, 'Not to worry. All will be well.' I don't know if he's the bravest man I've ever met or the maddest._

Dalir held it all back. Though he'd been labeled a traitor, he was far from it; there was no telling if this Raoul was a German spy. How else could he have gotten out of La Santé?

_'I'm sorry...Close your eyes...Folle ivresse, doux rêve...'_

He remembered_ that _too. Even the canniest intelligence officer in the enemy's employ couldn't have known about _that_. It was possible he'd dreamed it all up...but he'd felt him, hadn't he? Kissed him through bruised and bloodied lips. Hadn't he? _Hadn't_ he?

Raoul did not press him for more information when Dalir kept his silence. He was moving to the door, muttering something about a professor, and getting a glass of water, but Dalir stopped him with a single word.

"Erik."

Freezing on threshold, Raoul stopped with his hand on the doorknob. Slowly, he turned and looked down at Dalir rather sadly. "You do remember, then?"

And then it didn't matter who Raoul was or where he was, behind enemy lines or ten-thousand feet in the air, or Charenton or any other damned place. It only mattered that wherever he was, Erik might be also.

"Is he here?" Dalir demanded, throwing off the blankets that covered him, setting his feet on the floor. All the blood rushed out of his head and he sway, but Raoul was there with a solicitous hand under his elbow to steady him. Despite his lingering leeriness, Dalir held on and allowed the contact; the sooner he was back on his feet, the sooner he could find Erik and then...well, he didn't know, hadn't planned it out that far. Finding him had been the burning desire of his heart since that fateful day on board the airbase. And that seemed next to impossible in itself. 

Raoul looked down at him and nodded silently. "He is, but..."

Dalir shoved Raoul aside. Raoul staggered, clearly not expecting Dalir to be in any condition to exert force over him and that gave him the opportunity to make for the door and bolt outside -

Light. Bright, harsh winter sunlight streamed through a roof that was not a roof, but a series of glass panes. Temporarily blinded, Dalir brought an arm up to shield his face. He'd been too long in darkness to bear the assault. In this new room came new voices. A quick gasp, light, female, and young. And then another voice, older, male, lightly accented. 

"Better progress than I might have hoped for. I'll put in for a patent on that skin-glue."

Raoul's hands were back, hovering warmly about Dalir's elbow and side. "He's awake."

"Your incisive observations never cease to thrill me," the older man said mockingly. Dalir lowered his arm, forced his eyes open. Just as he thought; a man with a neat salt-and-pepper beard sat half reclining over the newspaper at a long table that looked like it belonged in an operating theatre. At his side stood a girl, tall and slender, with a great quantity of yellow hair messily plaited down her back. The girl remained where she was, but the man rose, looking Dalir over critically, as though he was a butterfly pinned to a board.

"Swelling is down to nil, and if I've worked out the correct formulae - which I flatter myself I have - that back of yours should show relatively few signs of your ordeal," he said, in lieu of an introduction. "I'll waive my fee since yours is a special case."

"Professor," the girl said warningly from her place by the slab. She worried her long, thin fingers together and looked at him nervously. "Sergent. How are you?"

Again, an inquiry as to how he was. This time, Dalir had no thought of being touched by the pleasantry. Instead he felt fury flare within him. How was he? How did she think? How did she suppose he was? Imprisoned, tortured, and then brought into some new place surrounded by strangers where the whole ordeal might well begin again.

It was a laboratory, he belatedly realized, putting the pieces together with sickening dread pooling in his stomach. There was a wall of instruments, neatly stacked and sanitized, awaiting use. Caustic chemicals in carefully labeled jars. Shelves of metal and hanks of rubbery-looking material the color of fair skin. 

The bearded man - the Professor - spoke of formulae and patents. Was this an experimental hospital? Was he another lab rat, forever in the government's employ? It was damned lucky for his captors that Raoul boasted no gun. If that was his fate, Dalir would have ripped a hole in his own head that no amount of skin-glue could patch. 

"Who are you people?" he demanded. "What is this place. Where is _Erik_?"

The girl opened her mouth and gestured toward him, arms outstretched, palms open, but the Professor cut her off before she had a chance to say a word.

"The first is, I am sorry to say, classified," he informed Dalir with a small, tight smile. "Being a military man, I'm sure you'll appreciate that. The girl you may refer to as Lotte. I am the Professor - and the one responsible for your miraculous physical recovery, I'm sure you'll be good enough to thank me when you've recovered more of your wits. The boy - "

"Raoul," Dalir finished for him, disliking the man intensely. He didn't like a man who spoke in riddles, secrets, lies, and smiled while doing it. And he certainly didn't trust him, regardless of what thank-yous this Professor believed he was owed. 

The smile vanished, replaced by a small frown.

"Ah," he said, losing his would-be-friendly demeanor. "So you've already become _acquainted_."

Behind him, Dalir sensed Raoul shrinking back, but he rallied admirably. 

"Does it matter?" Raoul shot back at the Professor. "Erik'll tell him everything he knows, you can be sure of that."

Dalir rounded on him, hands digging into the lapels of Raoul's thick wool coat, "Where_ is_ he?"

Behind them the Professor's damnably calm voice spoke out. "That is point the third. We're not quite there yet. Point the _second_, you are in what was once the shop of the best-regarded music box maker in the city. Count yourself fortunate; few have ever walked beyond the shop floor."

Dalir let Raoul go, hands fisting at his sides. The Professor stared at him unblinkingly behind wire-rimmed spectacles. Dalir had a few points that he was clear on himself. Point the first - the Professor was well aware that Dalir wanted nothing more than to wring his neck. Point the second - he wasn't too bothered by that fact. 

"Point the third," the Professor continued carelessly, as though Dalir wasn't looking at him with murder in his eyes. "That is a matter of some delicacy."

The girl with the long blonde plait got between them, her hands outstretched like she was soothing a wild creature.

"He's here," she said at once, and added, "he's alright. He just...he doesn't want you to see him."

"He doesn't want to see me?" Dalir repeated, trying to cover heartbreak with outrage. After all he'd done. All he'd lost. All that had been done _to_ him and Erik was right _here_, at long last, and he didn't want -

"No, you don't - " The girl closed her eyes and shook her head. She looked at Dalir with a great deal of sorrow and compassion. Her eyes were very large and blue, but oddly puffy and red-rimmed. She gently lay a hand against his chest, as if to anchor him there. Peering meaningfully at him, she repeated, "He doesn't want _you_ to see_ him_."

And Dalir understood. An awful, sudden realization. Of course, he had _seen_ him. Seen what the crash had done. And what the mechanics had done. At first he was horrified, seeing the man he loved (he did love him, more than he'd ever loved anyone or anything and he'd never told him, not even once) encased in metal and ticking like some great awful clock. When Buquet showed him to Erik's place in the line of twisted metal bodies, Dalir wondered how much of _him_ there was. Was there any of Erik left to love? Or was he only the partial flesh and blood scaffolding of some new weapon.

Buquet removed a needle stuck in his arm. There had been an awful wait. Then Erik's remaining eye fluttered open. He took a breath. And said, "Sergent - _Dalir?_" in a voice that was entirely his own. Hearing that voice sealed Dalir's fate and his ruin. 

Dalir might have wept, but he didn't. His shoulder shook, his eyes teared, but he wasn't crying. He was laughing. A hard, miserable laugh that made his stomach hurt.

"Oh, he doesn't want me to see him, does he?" Dalir choked out. The girl - Lotte - had removed her hand and cocked her head at him critically, almost clinically, like he was a malfunctioning contraption she wanted to hammer back into usefulness. "That's too bad. Too _fucking_ bad for him because I'll tear this place apart in search of him, pry up the floorboards if I have to. That stupid bastard - I don't care about his pride or his damned wounded ego - I don't care. I'll see him and there's not a thing any of you can do to stop me."

The last was patently untrue. He was unsteady on his feet and it was three against one. But Lotte stopped looking at him like he was a broken thing and she smiled. He liked her smile much more than the Professor's. Silently she held her hand out, cocking her head toward an open door that led out into a dark hall.

"My dear," the Professor interjected. "Do you really think that's wise? We have more pressing matters to discuss with the Sergent just at present."

"Later," she said, not looking at the Professor. "There'll be time later. What's done is done, isn't it? And can't be undone."

Her nose was turning red and her eyes started brimming with tears, but she lowered her chin and gave Dalir a tug. He followed and, to his great surprise, the Professor did not raise another objection. Raoul took a lurching half-step forward, as if he meant to follow, but stopped himself. 

They walked through the darkness of the hall, where the skylight did not penetrate. The building beyond the workshop they had begun in was eerily quiet. No cat prowled around them on the hunt for mice, no dogs barked. Even the traffic from the street outside was muffled. 

"You might as well know my name, my _real_ name is Christine," she said quietly. "Christine Daaé. I think you might have known my father."

Before Dalir could get a word out - of confirmation, of apology, of condolence, she raised her free hand to stop him. 

"Later," she said. "Erik was meant to get him. He brought you back. I've done with being angry over injustices I can't change. So I'll take you to him now. And later, if you like, you can...you can tell me about him."

Her thin, cold fingers fell from Dalir's grasp as she put both of her hands over her mouth to stifle a sob. Quick as a wink she dashed down the stairs, boots clattering. Dalir caught sight of her braid, whipping behind her before she disappeared around a banister and was gone.

Then there was noise. The creak and groan of hardwood floors as something moved in a room off the landing upon which Dalir stood. From within, a voice.

"Christine?"

Then heavy footfalls. Dalir's heart beat wildly in his chest. Their reunion - their reckoning - was at hand. 

"No," Dalir swallowed heavily and shook his head. "Not Christine."

The footfalls stopped. Dalir stood in the hall, Erik just inside the door. Closer than they'd been in months, but it felt like there was a gulf a mile wide between them. 

They stared at one another, in the dim half-light from a single bare bulb in the hallway and the low lamp of the room; despite it being midday, the curtains were drawn in the room Erik had sequestered himself in, shutting out the sunlight. Damn, but he was a big fellow. Even before he'd been Augmented, Dalir had the devil's own time dragging him about on shore leave when they'd go drinking with the other men and Erik would get ridiculous and affectionate after three glasses of wine - for or more and he needed help walking out of the place.

Still, a big lad, country born and bread was one thing, but Dalir well remembered the elongated limbs and heavy steel frame impeding their crazed escape from the base. Erik threw off the weight of the biplane he'd stolen. That, and Dalir's own nerves as he flew in the ensuing chase, resulted in their less-than-smooth landing. Erik had been thrown from the plane. And Dalir had been captured. What happened to Buquet he did not know and did not want to imagine.

Not that he himself was looking a prize. Dalir had been dressed in someone else's borrowed shirt and trousers and they hung off what had once been a robust frame. Though he hadn't seen himself, he figured skin-glue didn't do much to tidy up bruises and scars. What of that, though? A few square meals and regular exercise, he'd be right as rain. For Erik, there wasn't any going back. 

"Can I come in?" Dalir asked, uncomfortable in the silence - silence from _Erik_ of all people. Erik, who never shut up. Erik, whose voice had quickly become Dalir's favorite sound in all the world. 

"If you must," Erik sighed, lumbering back a few feet. He kept his face turned away, but Dalir well remembered the damage - the missing eye, the flayed-off skin. They'd covered it up with a mask, that was what the breathing tube adhered to. The mask and tube were gone. Dalir wanted to rip them off as well as all the needles that were sending drugs into his body, keeping him docile, but Buquet warned him he'd better not. Said they hadn't 'finished' with him yet. Cynically, Dalir wondered what else they could possibly do. New limbs, new flesh, new heart, new lungs - how much of a man could you take out and still call him a man?

Dalir followed him inside and walked immediately to the light. He turned it up, bright, _bright_ and this time it was Erik who cringed back from the light, trying to burrow away into the darkest corner of the room. 

"What are you doing?" Dalir asked, incredulously. "You break me out of prison and now you don't want me around? You'd have had an easier job of _that_ if you kept me locked up."

The side of Erik's face that Dalir could see visibly winced. 

"I wasn't meant to break you out," Erik replied, shoulders hunched, knees bent, like he was bracing himself for blows, though there wasn't a soul about who wished him harm. "But...it was you I found. And they were - good _God_, I thought they'd killed you. And when I saw you were breathing, you were alive, I couldn't_ think_, not about what I was meant to do, I just...had to take you with me."

_That's how it was with me_, Dalir thought. _I couldn't leave you. No matter the risk, no matter what it cost me, I couldn't just leave you lying there._

But he was too hurt and too confused to say so.

"And you didn't want me to give you a proper thank-you for that?" Dalir asked. "That Professor up there seems to want a handwritten note for gluing me back together."

Erik's mouth twitched, it might have been a smile under less miserable circumstances, but he didn't allow it to come through. "That's what they do 'round here. They bring people back from the dead and expect you to spend whatever life you've got left kissing their arses over it."

The realization cascaded over Dalir's very soul, like a plunge into icy water. Was that why Erik was being so cold with him? So distant? Dalir was the one who brought him back, who woke him up. Did he wish he'd left him? 

Just because something was done out of love, that didn't make it unselfish. Had Dalir been selfish? And so lost what he loved, not by fire and bullets, but his own stupid folly.

"Is that what you want?" Dalir tried to try for a light, careless tone. But it came out as a miserable croak. "Is-is that what you think_ I_ want?"

"No," Erik murmured, head tilted down, voice very, very quiet. "I...I know what you want. And this isn't it."

Dalir watch him gesture to himself with one gloved hand. Gloves. Coat. Though they were inside and it was warm enough. He stuffed his hands back into his pockets and tucked his chin down toward his chest, like a beaten dog hiding away from its wrathful master. 

And understanding came. Slowly, but it came. Like a dawning. 

"Oh," Dalir said quietly. His mouth formed the word 'no,' but no sound came out. He took an experimental step toward Erik, who did not move away; there wasn't anywhere else to go, unless he was inclined to pitch himself through the shuttered window. Dalir didn't doubt he'd survive the tumble, but imagined that Professor wouldn't look too kindly on picking glass and splinters out of him afterward.

One step became two. Then three. Then he'd crossed the whole of the room and stood before him. Dalir reached out with a right hand that shook a bit, upward, to lightly rest his fingers under Erik's chin. Deliberately he gave a push, urging him to turn his head. 

"Let me look at you," he asked steadily. "Then I'll tell you what I want."

Under Dalir's hand, he felt Erik swallow. He closed the eye Dalir could see. Then turned.

Not much had changed to the right side, only that now that the breathing tube was out Dalir could see more of it. The mouth was asymmetrical. The eye was still gone, replaced with a facsimile that was white and did not quite blink in time with the other. The nose was a caved-in crater. And the flesh was pock-marked and raw, the skull beneath malformed and misshapen, twisted by flame and shrapnel. 

"I'll take it," Dalir said, voice tight with emotion. His grip tightened on Erik's chin and he tugged him down now, putting his left hand on his shoulder to pull him closer. Erik allowed himself to be bent toward him and Dalir brushed his lips against the scars on Erik's left cheek. "I'll take it."

Mechanical knees buckled and Erik fell to the ground with a crash before him, shaking his head. Dalir grabbed him close, on instinct, let him bury his face in his chest, let him put his arms around him, let them be crushed together, to fold into one another, like they were in some crucible. Once joined, never parted. 

"Good for you, then," Erik moaned into his chest. His shoulders shook and heaved with sobs. As he gasped, he managed to say, "Because I don't want it. _Any_ of it. Christ, Dalir, look what they've done to me."

Dalir's ribs protested their rough treatment, but he didn't allow a sound of pain to escape. He'd heal; Erik never would. 

Carding his fingers through his hair he simply stood there and let Erik cry his heart out all over him. He wondered if anyone had given him the chance then. If any of the merry trio of fixers upstairs asked for a by-your-leave before they rendered him battle-ready.

"This isn't...God, I _hate_ it, Dalir," he gritted out, brow pressed tight to Dalir's sternum. "I hate this, every second of it, I can't...I can't get away from it, can't get away from myself. I don't even know if there's any of me _left_. My hands! These aren't even my hands. I can bend steel fucking bars, but I can't play the violin. Why? _Why?_"

Dalir wrapped his arms around Erik's neck and held him with all the strength he could muster. He closed his eyes and felt tears roll down his own cheeks. 

_They didn't care about you. They didn't care about your music or your dreams or your being a fucking lightweight when you're drinking. They didn't know you cried yourself to sleep when you heard the typhoid got your mother and father and sister while you were shooting Germans out of the sky. They didn't know you had someone out there who still loved you, even though your family was gone._

"Because they didn't see _you_," Dalir said, kissing Erik's head. His hair smelled the same, after everything. "They didn't see you and they didn't care. They didn't see the man, even before all this. They wanted a soldier - a weapon. A tool for war. I think...I think that's what we all were to them. Flesh and blood or steel and iron."

Erik pulled back, looking at Dalir with one eye, white and eerie, the other bloodshot, brimming with tears, both sides of his face distorted now and miserable.

"_I_ see you," Dalir continued forcefully, gripping the back of Erik's head tightly, staring into his eyes, the white and the blue, steadily. "I always have. Always will."

"You'll...you said you'd _take_ it?" Erik shook his head, let out a shuddering breath. "You've got to be out of your fucking mind."

Dalir smiled. It made his mouth ache; it had been the first time he'd smiled in months.

"So I'm out of my fucking mind," he said. Then, the bottom of his stomach dropping out, a feeling identical to the one that came when he nosedived into the forests in Alsace-Lorraine, added, "Isn't love meant to be some kind of madness?"

Erik looked up at him. Dalir wondered if his stomach had dropped out too. If his clockwork heart stopped ticking. If time was standing still for him as well. 

"You_ love_ me," he repeated, like it was a lesson he wanted to be sure he committed to memory. Then, he smiled. And, for the briefest instant, the care and the pain and the sorrow was gone. Dalir found himself looking into the face of that cocksure pilot he'd given his heart to a year ago.

He should have said it then. He should have done a lot of things differently. But the past was past. Dalir found Erik, he hadn't planned for anything beyond that. He'd find him. He'd tell him he loved him. And the rest would sort itself out. 

"I love you," Erik said simply and the smile widened into a lopsided grin; different than the smile Dalir remembered from a year ago since the damaged side of his face did not move in concert with the rest, but it was a smile he could come to love very well indeed. "Of course, I do. I have for ages and ages. I almost told you - remember that day we'd come down and I took you to the river? I almost told you then. But I thought I'd scare you off."

Dalir smoothed his hair away from his face. "I'm a hard one to scare."

"I know that now," Erik said. "I'm not."

"Well, then," Dalir replied reasonably, "it's a good thing I'm here to look after you, isn't it?"

Erik continued to hold him, still tightly, but less desperately. He turned his head and pressed his ear against Dalir's chest, right over his heart. Dalir rested his brow on the crown of Erik's head. And they remained like that for some time, in the harsh glow of the electric light, as the winter sun slipped steadily behind the bright, glittering buildings of the metropolis, beyond the shuttered room. 


	11. Hidden

It really shouldn't have surprised her as much as it did when Madame Giry pulled Gigi aside following rehearsal and informed her that there was a job to be had. Weakly, Gigi attempted to protest; she was busy, she didn't have time to spare on runaway revolutionaries, there was her dancing to consider, her arrangement with the Vicomte, her poor mother - but it was on this point Madame had her caught. Did she not understand Gigi's circumstances intimately? And had she not only a few weeks ago been all generosity where her mother was concerned? Gigi recognized a debt when she saw one. And so she let Madame wrap her long, cool fingers around her bare upper arm and take her away from the corps and into a private room where they might conference undisturbed. 

The interior rooms of the Opéra, where the offices and workshops resided, felt like oppressive close-quarters compared to the brilliance of the rehearsal rooms and the grand auditorium, lit from above by a glittering skylight or the enormous electrical chandelier, a marvel of modern technology. Here in the heart of the Opéra, all was gaslight and gloom, a proper match for the cloak-and-dagger escapades which were often conducted therein.

The opera house was a great meeting place of the Empire, but it was not itself a political entity. Treated as a place of neutrality within the city, no matter what sides of a debate one was on, various leaders of various factions and great families could come to marvel at the spectacle, laugh, and weep, in a show of solidarity; after all, _they_ were only human.

"What I am about to ask of you is a task which is not difficult, but it is dangerous," Madame advised. "You will have to be careful. I have three individuals who will require safekeeping for an indefinite period of time."

Gigi nodded, glumly. She'd done the same before: when souls sympathetic to the plight of Augments and Automata were suddenly being sought after by the gendarmerie they often sought refuge in the Opéra. And why not? It was like hiding in plain sight: no one would suspect a person would run to the glittering gem of Paris if they wanted to go unnoticed.

But the Opéra herself was the ideal place for haboring secrets; the shining, transparent exterior was only a facade, of course. The cellars ran deep. All the way down to the catacombs and tombs of the dead, of one was foolhardy or brave and ventured far enough. Gigi had many times, clad in drab, shapeless brown coats and with a kerchief tied round her face, bearing a basket of wine and bread until the investigations passed or passage out of the city could be arranged. The Opéra's mysterious inhabitants never lasted long under her care and, so far, she had never been caught; though some of the ballet rats started rumors of ghosts in the cellars. It was a useful fiction that helped keep those inclined to curiosity well away. 

"Where will they be kept?" Gigi asked. "The third cellar?"

Beyond the boilers, she supposed, where walls of stone were enough like a house to keep their guests in relative comfort, so long as they didn't mind too much about not having any windows.

But Madame shook her head, "Beyond the lake. And nothing more to be said about it."

She produced a piece of paper, with a list of necessaries to be purchased along with a small amount of money to purchase them with. With a stern warning to memorize the list and burn it up in the gas jet before she left the office, Madame swept out, leaving Gigi with her marching orders and a dozen unanswered questions.

Who _were_ these people? The lean-to beyond the lake was the uppermost secrecy they could offer, but tedious to get to, requiring the use of a rowboat to travel by and a lantern to see by. It must be someone equal parts important to their cause and dangerous to the government.

For a second, Gigi's heart soared. She knew of only one person who would require such extreme measures - Christine's father. There were rumors of a prison break at La Santé - nothing in the official papers, of course, but news traveled fast in the underground. Was it possible that M. Daaé had been liberated?

It would be dangerous and foolhardy to investigate herself and Gigi was not a reckless girl. She did as she was bid and returned to the Opéra at the appointed time, after she had seen that her mother was settled in for the night. It was well after midnight when she made her way back, the place appeared to be shuttered and locked up tight. She long ago memorized the path of the night watchman and knew he would be far from the Rue Scribe entrance, where she let herself in with a key obtained in secrecy. The door opened completely silently; sympathetic members of the concierge always kept _those_ hinges well-oiled.

From there it was a long, slow journey in the dark to the lake. Another marvel of engineering, though not so pretty as the domed roof or glass facade. The ground upon which the Opéra stood was a mire and water continually seeped into the foundations when they were being dug. M. Garnier had a radical solution - rather than attempt to flush the onslaught, why not contain it? Seal it all up tight where it would remain, under the street, and unnoticed, except by those few who were aware it was there.

It was all fairly brilliant and, Gigi ruefully reflected, rather like the city itself. A beautiful ornament, with foetid and churning waters beneath it all. 

She was careful as she ventured below, placing her feet carefully and mindful of how she moved. It wouldn't do to come so far only to lose her place in the company because of a turned ankle. She must have been at it for an hour or more by the time she arrived at the house on the lake and she raised her hand to knock at the door. 

Gigi had ventured this deep only a few times. The hiding place was a glorified lean-to with old set dressings stolen to insulate the walls and floors against the cold and to provide a few other scraps of comfort: beds, chairs, a writing desk. There was no ice box, no way to preserve food, and the clean water supply was limited as well. That was why having a contact to the world above was so vital; the lives of those who were brought below depended upon her, quite literally. 

Whoever was within was a long time coming to the door. It opened slowly, revealing bit by bit not M. Daaé, but a handsome, blue-eyed young man, with pale skin and a face that might be called pretty, were it not for the bags under his eyes and the tightness in his jaw. At first, Gigi did not recognize him, it was only when he saw her and muttered, "Thank God," that she realized she was standing before a clean-shaven Raoul de Chagny.

What a difference the studious application of soap and water made to a chap! At last she could see the resemblance between himself and Philippe; Raoul was slighter and fairer by far, bereft as he was of his old Navy coat. The beard was gone and his hair had been neatly cut, making him appear very young indeed. She could think of no finder disguise for the former aristocrat, fallen from grace. 

"Well?" he asked, and the disguise was broken for he assumed his usual manner of brusque rudeness that she had such a distaste for. "Are you coming in? Or would you like a by-your-leave?"

"A good-evening would have suited me well," Gigi said, raising her head imperiously; she'd not be cowed by Raoul or anyone. Assuming the regal stance of a queen, despite her shabby coat and unflattering kerchief, she strode over the threshold. Her eyes were well adjusted to the gloom without; by contrast, the single lamp burning on the writing desk inside made the place look almost cheery. 

Raoul snorted as he shut the door behind her. "It's well after midnight; good-evening is a bit overstating it, don't you think?"

"Stop that."

A sharp, commanding voice she did not recognize spoke, but Gigi remembered seeing the face of the man it belonged to in the newspapers - at least, a version of that face. The light brown skin and bright green eyes were all that remained from the police renderings. His face was covered over with half-healed scars and his handsomeness had been wasted away by a lack of food and an abundance of torment. The dishonorable deserter, the Sergent Dalir Mazandarani. A wanted man. 

"That's no way to speak to a young lady who took such a risk to bring us food," Sergent Mazandarani said, his voice kind and full of gentlemanly solicitude. "Thank you, mademoiselle."

Gigi lowered her eyes and did not answer, fingers tightening on the handle of the bundle she carried, full of provisions. She did not want _that_ one to remember her face. Just in case he decided he'd rather have his place back with the government and turned spy on all of them. It would not be the first time such a thing had happened. 

Harumphing, Raoul held out a hand for the bundle, which she wordlessly handed over. Bread, wine, clean water and hard dried meat would sustain them a few days before she would need to come back. 

"I'll be back in three days," she said stiffly, addressing the toes of Raoul's worn boots. "If you require resupplying."

She desperately hoped they would not. If it was Raoul himself, she would make the trek willingly, despite her personal dislike; his cause was just even if his personality left something to be desired. But the former Sergent? A traitor to one cause could quite easily turn traitor to another. And what of the third she'd been told about? 

As if in answer to her unspoken thoughts, a shadow in the corner stirred. Despite her attempt to remain as inconspicuous as possible, Gigi lifted her eyes and turned on instinct toward the movement. It was only the quick placement of Raoul's hand over her mouth that stifled her screams; not that it mattered. No one could hear them, deep underground as they were. No one but the dead.

This..._thing_, it looked dead. The face did, a mess of flesh and muscle with an empty staring hole for an eye and a crevice where a nose should be. Gigi swallowed back a scream and the urge to be sick all over the floor. She had seen first-hand the results of poor Augmentation, the broken bodies and twisted or missing limbs. But nothing that looked as this creature did. 

Her heartrare increased when she realized it was seated upon the ground; standing the thing would tower over her and the breadth of shoulders and size of its chest spoke of its ability to cause pain and destruction. She did not fear much, but she was absolutely terrified of the creature in the corner.

Speaking in her ear with an unaccustomed gentleness, Raoul tried to soothe her nerves. "Shh, it's alright. There's nothing to worry about, he won't hurt you. That's Erik, he's...a friend."

Gigi was not entirely sure that it was a _man_, let alone a _friend_. But the creature did not stand to its full height. It turned its hideous head away and remained utterly motionless. Like a statue, or a boulder. 

It took a minute for her to master herself, but Gigi batted Raoul's hand away and took a halting step back. Though her legs were strong from dancing, they wobbled a little as she backed toward the door, one eye on the creature (_Erik_, Raoul called it) all the while. 

"I'll be back in three days time," she said, desperate to go. "With the same provisions, unless Madame tells me otherwise."

The Sergent was no longer looking at her. His attention was now on the creature in the corner. He'd his hand on the back of its neck and for a heart-pounding instant, Gigi thought that was where an activation switch was located and feared she was done for - but no. He merely stood by it and crouched down to speak softly to it. 

"That'll do," Raoul said, his eyes also locked on the pair in the corner. He rubbed at his eyes irritably. It was truly remarkable how very young and vulnerable he appeared without his usual trappings. Gigi wondered if he was truly safe down there, with a former military man and his pet monster. But he seemed entirely at his ease. Even better than usual, for he thanked her, and, with an ironic smile upon his mouth, bid her good-night. 

Gigi made her way upstairs as fast as she could, not feeling truly settled until she was back at the Rue Scribe entrance, tucking her key in a hidden pocket in her clothes. It was not her place to ask too many questions, it brought her deeper into the secret network, made her a more prominent figure and a more dangerous target to those who would seek to destroy them. She tried her hardest to remain aloof, uninvolved. She called no one of her co-conspirators friends and tried hard not to love anyone at all, except her mother. 

And one other, though that was quite by accident and involuntary. _Philippe_. God, what a secret to keep; he knew of his brother's involvement in politics, but she was sure he never dreamed that things could go so badly for him that he would have to go into hiding. What despair he would feel if he tried to contact him and received no word. And here she was, knowing precisely where to find him and unable to breathe a word.

Squeezing her eyes shut against a rush of nervous crying, she cursed them all. Cursed Raoul for being reckless and too passionate for his own good. Cursed the government who chased him. Cursed the factory owners who were so greedy and thoughtless that they drove working people onto the streets and replaced flesh and blood with iron and steel. 

Sharp footsteps on the pavement made her bolt; the nightwatchman on his rounds. It would do her no good to linger, but she was too agitated to go home. A mad impulse to wander 'til dawn seized her, but now that her blood was no longer running hot with adrenaline, she was bone-tired. Her feet carried her over the avenues and boulevards to a familiar address, though she had never gone there with the expectation of being alone.

Philippe paid a handsome sum for her suite at the hotel. It was kept up, clean and neat as a pin, even when she was not using it. Were it not for Mamma, Gigi would have been tempted to reside there always, with that magnificent hot bath and that bed with its soft sheets and warm pillows. An oasis from a cold and frightening world. She would use it as such for the remainder of the night. 

The lone clerk at the desk had been half-nodding over the register, but he looked up and smiled sleepily when he saw her. 

"Monsieur is already, waiting," he said, following her to the lift to act as attendant as they rode to the proper floor together. 

Though she had removed her kerchief and revealed her face, Gigi was confused; surely he was mistaken. Philippe no more stayed in this room than she did when they did not plan a rendezvous. And yet, when she arrived and flicked on the electric light, she found a very solid bump in her bedding, dark blonde hair stuck up over the pillows and the most enchanting pair of dazed blue eyes looking her over from the bed. 

"Oh," she said as the door shut behind her with an audible 'click.' "I didn't expect - "

"I'm sorry," Philippe was clambering out of bed - in a nightshirt. She'd never seen him in one before. The image was so startlingly domestic, it took her breath away. What a thing to witness, as though he was her husband, gone to bed early, who she'd startled out of sleep. Extraordinary. "I told you these rooms were yours and they certainly are. I'll go - "

"No, stay," she said at once, nevermind the fact that she'd come for privacy. The thought of losing this image, of Philippe, getting out of bed in the middle of the night, not getting into bed in the middle of the afternoon, was suddenly precious to her. "Really. Stay. I don't...I don't mind."

He looked doubtful. "Are you certain?"

"Yes," she said firmly. "Get back into bed, I'll...be along in a minute."

This time there was no lingering bath, no application of lotions or perfumes. Her hair was a bedraggled mess, her face clean, but otherwise unpainted. She was only wearing her simple combinations and no sooner had she come out of the bathroom than she nearly ran to the lights, hoping against hope that Philippe was asleep so that he would not be disillusioned by the reality of her rather than the carefully cultivated fantasy she always supplied him. 

In fact he was sitting up in bed, hands loosely clasped in his lap as though he didn't know what to do with him. The look of pleased astonishment on his face was agony for her to interpret until he said, breathlessly, "My God, you're so beautiful."

Gigi laughed hollowly as she flicked off the light. "You're an inveterate liar, at two in the morning."

"Nothing of the kind," Philippe said in the darkness. It was a black night, no moon, and the stars were not visible beyond the streetlights. It was in a dim glow from the lights beyond the window that she found his outstretched hands. He shifted to make room for her under the blankets and she pressed against his side. His chest, where she draped her arm across it in her accustomed fashion, was cool, but his lips were warm as he pressed them to her forehead. 

It was so blissful and so false. Gigi would have been quite a wreck over it if she wasn't so comfortable and the hour wasn't so late. She only chanced breaking the spell when she asked, "Why did you come?"

Perhaps Philippe too was unduly influenced by the lateness of the hour and the comfort of her body against his for he answered her with exhausted honesty. "I couldn't bear to be in that house tonight. This was the only place I wanted to be. I never dreamed you would come here too. I know you don't use it when I don't ask you to."

_Why not?_ lingered heavy in the air between them and, nerves in shreds and her guard let down, Gigi chanced honesty. A little crack in the wall of secrets between them.

"My mother," she replied simply. "She is unwell and requires care."

Philippe's breath hitched, "I could - "

"Shh," she breathed into his shoulder. "You couldn't. We get on well and I don't want her to...she doesn't know that I..."

She could not go on. If she did, she would sound ungrateful (she wasn't) or ashamed of herself (she _certainly_ wasn't). Mamma would never understand; she had made mistakes in her youth, mistakes she did not want her daughter repeating. It did her no harm to believe that they were supported by her dancing alone. Let her go on and have her fantasy; Gigi well knew the benefit of clinging to dreams when one lost all else.

The dream of falling asleep beside her husband. Of warm kisses on the brow and drowsy, 'Good-night, darling,' whispered to one another in the dark. It was all so simple, but so impossible. She knew it. And so did Philippe, though there was so much about her and so much between them that he did not know, that he could never know.

"I'm glad you've told me," he said carefully, after a silence in which all that remained unsaid hung thick in the air between them. "I appreciate knowing a little more about you. Sometimes...sometimes I think I dreamed you up, you know."

"I'm right here," Gigi whispered, as his arms tightened - carefully, always _so_ carefully - around her. "I'm no dream. You say such..." _wonderful_ "...silly things, sometimes."

"Mmm," Philippe hummed, his voice distant. "I don't say nearly as much as I want to."

_Neither do I_, she thought, despair creeping in at the edges. No, no. That wouldn't do at all. Better to close her eyes and rest within the dream.

"Let's just sleep," Gigi sighed. "No matter how or why we came to be here. Let's...simply _be_. Shall we?"

Philippe held her close and she buried her face against the living flesh of his shoulder, his nightclothes soft on her cheek. As she drifted off, she pretended that this was _their_ bedroom in _their_ house. That they lived, not in his family manse which so discomfited him, but a lovely little home on a wide boulevard, lined with trees. A trellis would be afixed to one side of the house so roses might climb the walls in the summertime. So deeply cocooned in fantasy was she that as she drifted off, Gigi was not sure if the lips she felt pressing against the top of her head or the murmured, "Good-night, my love," were real or a product of her imagination.


	12. Dreams

_The dreams always started the same way._

They were at their country estate on a cool spring morning. The breakfast room had been converted into an operating theatre - for the light, the doctor said. It glowed behind Philippe's closed eyelids, red, like a brand.

The doctor was a small, unremarkable man with a pointed beard and sharp eyes. He smiled and patted Philippe on the shoulder. His touch was warm against the chill of the room on his skin. Philippe was bare to the waist, a white smear on the table; his chest was small and narrow, ribs prominent. He'd been given something to make him drowsy, but he was not asleep and caught snippets of their conversation, the father to the doctor. None of it made sense to him at the time, in the state he was in, but he tried to remember. He thought it must be important. 

"The serum has not yet been patented. Why?" that was his father.

The doctor spoke amid the clink of instruments, the tapping of a a glass vial. "Because I do not want it upon the world stage. This is a powerful drug - dangerous. I want to use it to enhance and heal. Others might use it for...terrible things."

Though he spoke French his voice was accented; Papa mentioned that he was Scandinavian, but Philippe did not recall which country he'd come from. He wished he remembered; he was an expert in world geography, having poured over the maps and atlases in his father's study until he knew them by heart. It was the closest he'd get to exploring the world; he was too weak to travel much.

"Dangerous?" the Comte asked, but there was no quaver in his voice as might be natural for a father subjecting his son to an experimental medical procedure. No, in his voice was a note of intrigue. Of excitement. 

The doctor deliberately misheard him. "Not to worry, the young Vicomte will be fine. Better than fine. That's the trouble, you see."

The delicate pinprick of a needle entered his arm. The voices faded, as though Philippe was rapidly traveling from them at great speed. Then he knew nothing else. When he awoke was not in the breakfast room anymore, he was in his bedroom. The sunlight was a dim glow behind the curtains; dawn. He'd slept almost the whole day. But he did not notice; what struck him most was how awake he felt, how alert. No matter how much he slept he always felt fatigued. But not this morning. It was as though he'd been struck by lightning; he felt invigorated, _alive_. For the first time in thirteen years.

When he sat up and looked down at his chest, expecting to see bandages, there were none. Just a patch of skin, no different in color from the flesh that surrounded it. But it was cool to the touch; rough against the pads of his fingers. Beneath his hands, his heart beat strong (tick, tick, tick) and his lungs filled completely with air, in and out, in and out. As though they'd never struggled or faltered before. 

Philippe spent six weeks at that estate, convalescing, but it was like no convalescence he'd ever experienced. He ran around the grounds, truly ran, and explored for hours. He climbed a tree (and experienced a thrill of fear when he realized he had no idea how to get down). He'd eaten with an appetite he'd never had, by the time he got home there was color in his cheeks, a brightness in his eyes and a tan to his skin, having spent so much time out of doors. He'd also grown an inch. 

That was a result of the doctor's miracle serum; the heart and lungs were superb and flawless, powerful. His drug enabled the rest of the body to catch up. 

_The first part was always bliss. The remembered relief of his body finally working the way he wanted it to. Of feeling, for the first time in his life, just like any other boy. Before reality took hold. Before the drug truly went to work. And he realized that the aim of the surgery was not to make him like any other child; it was to make him more than that._

They returned to the house, Philippe rushing ahead of his father (always running, always moving, never still or idle anymore), bursting in to find some of the upper servants waiting to greet him. They all expressed astonishment at his recovery, talked about how well he looked. He soaked in their well-wishes, babbled about how well he felt, how grateful to his father and the doctor. He had been too young, perhaps, and too naive to notice how they exchanged glances and their voices changed, the astonishment tinged with suspicion and not a little fear about how he seemed to be a completely different boy.

What stung the most was seeing his mother appear at the top of the stairs. She stood, one hand steadily herself on the banister and stared down at him. Her blue eyes were large and wide, her face pale, but she'd always been pale; Philippe was said to take after her very much. 

He'd called out to her. An excited, 'Maman!' for they had always been close. He would read to her while she did her needlework and she to him when he was ill. But the greeting was too loud, too boisterous, too unlike him. And she turned away, retreated to her upstairs drawing room. And did not come out for the rest of the day. 

It took time for her coldness to descend into hostility. As her horror increased, so too did Philippe start to feel the first inkling that something about him wasn't right. That the normality and health he craved had been twisted into something else. Six months after the procedure he was startled one morning to realize he did not recognize the face staring back at him in the mirror. Gone was the wisp of a child, small and thin, all made of angular features and stick-skinny limbs. The boy staring back at him might be called tall for his age, shoulders and chest gradually broadening out. 

The mechanics that kept him alive were extraordinary - unnatural, the newspapers said - and the rest of him was being reformed to match.

A year later, Philippe had trouble remembering the boy he used to be, so different was he to that feeble invalid. Even his sisters eyed him askance now, ever since the incident when a water glass shattered in his hand over dinner; he'd not been angry, not felt anything, only grasped it too tightly, to carelessly. It broke apart in his hand like spun sugar. Once the slivers of glass had been picked out of his palm, the cuts ceased bleeding at once; they were completely scabbed over by morning.

He was taller than his father now; Papa laughed it off to friends as a latent growth spurt, Nature finally triumphing over childish illness. Augmentation was beginning to fall out of fashion, to become taboo to speak of. No one dared question his hand-waving and explanations. Philippe never said anything himself; despite his newfound vigor he'd gone quiet in company. The more robust he became, the more he tried to shrink away, to pass unnoticed, lest everyone realize what he was. 

_The dreams of his past always ended the same; Philippe feeling ill at ease with himself, the world, and his mother smiling for the first time since he'd gone away to be healed; she was going to have another child, she told them. A boy. She was sure it was going to be a boy. _

Yet the dream shifted again, continued. Raoul's birth had been long and difficult. Maman was weak and bedridden for weeks afterward; she had the girls come and sit with her. Philippe knew he would be unwelcome, but he walked by her room many times, pressed his ear to the door listening to the sound of her breathing. Even if she no longer loved him, he'd never stopped loving her. 

So much attention was being given to the Comtess that little Raoul was half forgotten. He was fed, clothed, kept warm and clean, but otherwise unlooked-after. Philippe, in one of his daily pilgrimages to his mother's door was drawn by the sound of mournful crying to the nursery and the cot. There was Raoul, small and helpless, bald as an egg, begging, it seemed, for love.

And though Philippe was almost fifteen years his senior, he understood; if it wasn't beneath his age and dignity, he might sob like that too sometimes. With a glance over his shoulder to make sure he wouldn't be discovered, he picked the baby up carefully - so, _so_ carefully, sending up a silent prayer that he might not harm him accidentally. 

Raoul quieted a bit as Philippe settled him against his chest. He was so small, like a bird, but warm and his tiny hands were as soft as down. One of Raoul's tiny ears was pressed to Philippe's chest, just over his heart. Tick, tick, tick. The baby must have found the sound soothing, for he was fast asleep, quick as blinking.

_Philippe? Philippe?_

A slender brown hand weighted upon his chest - not a child. Those memories were twenty years old. When Philippe opened his eyes, he saw Gigi staring down at him, a small, warm smile on her face, dark curls fanned about her like a halo and he wondered if he was still dreaming. 

"I must go," she told him. The city was starting to awaken beyond the hotel windows; it was just past dawn. "I must see to my mother."

"Yes, of course," he replied at once, the events of the evening replaying. The surprise of seeing her so late in the rooms he kept for her. The bliss of having her fall asleep in his arms. And, less welcome, the madness that brought him there in the first place. 

Once Gigi had taken her leave, he glanced over at the desk, undisturbed from the way the concierge set it up the night before, but within a locked drawer was a quantity of papers, some whole, others torn and wrinkled fragments. Some of the information that Raoul had been rifling through that disastrous night of _Robert le Diable_.

Philippe had kept them back. Robert invented a marvelous tale for the Comte; the house had been burgled when Philippe was at the Opéra. The broken doorhandle and forced lock on the Comte's desk were used as evidence. Raoul's name was never mentioned; naturally it would not be. Philippe had not mentioned his brother's coming round to his father and the Comte had no reason to suspect Raoul had been anywhere near the house in three years. 

He should not have retained the papers. He should have replaced them. Or maybe destroyed them. But he kept them tucked inside an inner pocket of his jacket, placing them within when he dressed every morning alongside his wallet and handkerchief. It might have been borne of an immature naivete - Raoul wouldn't have _used_ him like that if it hadn't been important, would he? (He might.) But it was his father's reaction to the theft which made Philippe hold on to them. 

It was the closest the Comte had ever come to bringing him to discussing some of his work. He swore and lost some of his infamous composure. Evidently what was gone was important. He spoke of setbacks. Of delays. That there would be disruptions at the ministerial level. There was an immediate telephone call and the Comte expressed extreme dissatisfaction that some mysterious figure, (Daaé? Daye? The name was unfamiliar to Philippe, if it was indeed a name), would not be dealt with immediately.

Still, though Philippe held onto the papers, keeping them close like a holy medallion, he did not read them. An honest, embarrassed part of him was afraid he would not understand them. Another part of him was afraid he might. But it was like the proverbial penny; the longer he held onto them, the more they weighed on his mind, a piece of lead in his pocket, too heavy to carry.

The evening previous he'd become too weary of the load. He locked the door to his private chambers. He turned out the lights so no gleam could be seen under the door. He lit a small oil lamp, sat in a chair far from the windows and doors. And then, finally, got a glimpse of what his father was hiding, which Raoul was so keen to discover.

It was fragments, mostly. Blueprints and designs. The figure of a man, wired like an Automaton, but with anatomical illustrations indicating that there were organs in places where batteries were often stored. A chemical formula, incomplete. But he had some letters, half written in his father's hand, half in another's. Talking about an unveiling. A grand spectacle. And a copy of a writ of execution.

Gustav Daaé, a local artisan and maker of music boxes, at leas that was his cover. In truth, he was an Augmenter, but he had not been arrested for carrying out illegal surgeries. No, his charge was simple and ancient: treason.

The Comte spoke of this Daaé in his letters:

**I believe this Daaé is the only one of them who knows of the Doctor's formula, apart from the man himself. He is a leader in their so-called resistance - so too, I believe, is the Doctor, but his present visibility and respectability renders him untouchable. It must be Daaé and it must be public. It will teach the people a lesson; one cannot halt the march of progress on a mandate from the masses. His arrest sent them all scattering; his execution will crush them utterly. **

**Project Lazarus will be a success. Despite the minor setback. I have every confidence that Lafitte was destroyed in the crash; so much the better. I understand Lafitte was taken in an incomplete state. I am willing to suffer the loss of one of the new army; the procedure was only half-complete. I believe they had not performed the trepanation yet. Anyway, Lafitte has been replaced. My people will complete the order the Ministry has demanded on schedule.**

**As to your last - the suggestion that P might serve his nation in the armed services, I think not. He is flighty and irresponsible. He will do the Ministry and the nation no credit in battle. He is why I suggested the trepanation and lobotomy of our soldiers. His heart might be clockwork, but I am afraid that, in essentials, he is the weak and diffident boy he always was. Still. Not a waste. His development has proved most instructive. **

The letter went on, discussing the peace talks with Germany with undisguised impatience, but Philippe understood. At least enough to know that he could not spend another minute in his father's home.

A waste. 'His development.' Formulae and blueprints - and suddenly the course of his life attained an awful clarity. His father had not sent him to the country to be healed for his own sake. Nor even to continue the family name and reputation. Philippe was nothing but a cog in the wheel of some great machine, too large and complex to be viewed in its entirety. Not by Philippe, who was kept ignorant and docile. Fine clothes and limitless spending money and an Opéra patronage to keep him busy and content.

_Some things are more important than the Opéra, Philippe_, Raoul had said. The way he'd looked at him! Sadly, almost pityingly. A fool. Or worse. A _nothing_. A breathing Automaton, whose father discarded him, kept him busy, told him nothing of substance. A disappointment. But not_ quite_ a waste, no, because the Comte could learn from Philippe's failures to push forward something enormous, something with far-reaching implications. A man's life in the balance. And the resistance his father spoke of, the people Raoul had fallen in with. The Comte meant to _crush them utterly_. Was Raoul part of 'them'? 

Feeling furious and helpless, Philippe fled. At first he wandered the streets aimlessly, for hours, the papers inside his coat, but no longer a weight in his pocket, now a millstone around his neck. How long he had deceived himself! How stupid he had been to assume his father held back explaining his business to him because of personal vanity, a denial that he was getting older and must turn over the reins of power to his son and heir. Philippe was nothing to the Comte, he saw now. Nothing but an experiment which hadn't turned out as he wanted. 

The hotel room offered solace. Though it was empty, he could delude himself that any minute Gigi might come to him, sweet-smelling with welcoming arms and a soft body to lose himself in. That she might listen to him and he to her. That he could lie to himself and blissfully pretend that here, at last, was someone who loved him.

The fact that she'd come - disheveled, upset, taken off-guard - seemed like a dream. Something his disturbed (weak, diffident) mind conjured up. But this was no fantasy. This was a girl whose face was scrubbed clean of rouge and paint, dressed in a drab frock and plain coat. Who was shaken and tired and seemed to take as much comfort from him as he did her. 

He'd almost told her then, feverishly confessed his heart, _I love you. I love you. You don't have to love me back, just let me tell you how I feel_...but even as he remembered his feelings, his throat felt tight and ashamed. Philippe had just enough self-possession to feel repelled at the idea of putting Gigi in that position. Forced to smile and lie through gritted teeth, '_Oh, I love you too darling_,' or, more probably, softly touch his face, smile at him and reply that it was a sweet thing for him to say. Sweet and meaningless to her for he was under no illusion that she loved him back. He was a fool, but he knew what this was. A transaction, more intimate than an exchange with a bank teller, but with no touch of divinity. Not for her. 

Though he had not gotten assurance of her love that night, he got something almost as precious. An honest piece of her, of her life. She had an ill mother who she cared for. The fact that she mentioned her again on waking was like a lifeline for him: he might not have her love, but he had her confidence. He'd learned something about her, something true and real. There was a kind of divinity in that. She had willingly given him her trust; something his father had never done. 

After he'd washed and dressed himself in yesterday's clothes, Philippe removed the papers from the locked drawer. He spared a glance at himself in a mirror before he left the room. He was no skilled actor, but the years had made him an excellent liar. Outwardly he was composed, even cold. No trace of the heartbroken fury that burned within him. 

For a few minutes, Philippe stared and tried to find him, that sickly boy who had died that day in that breakfast room cum surgery, only to be resurrected as the imposing man in the mirror. What would that boy think, if he could see him now? Would he be impressed?

Swallowing hard, Philippe turned away from the mirror and left the hotel suite. No, surely not. In all probability, the boy would have been frightened.

An inquiry at the front desk and he was in possession of a five-year-old telephone directory. Philippe declined the use of the hotel's telephone and the offer of the clerk to call a cab for him, and left the property with an address in his mind, taking himself there on foot. A half an hour later he found himself in front of a three-story building, the ground level dark within. Upon the sagging shelves in the window was a display of dusty music boxes, but he could see nothing within, no sign of life. Nevertheless, he rang the electric doorbell and waited. And waited.

Ten minutes upon the doorstep and he was sure no one was home. He turned to go when he heard a voice which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. A lovely woman's voice, which asked, "What do you want?"

"I..." Discomfited to be speaking seemingly to no one, Philippe rallied his nerves and asked, "Is this the business of Gustav Daaé?"

The lovely voice soured with a cynical chuckle and was harder as it replied, "Not anymore. What do you want?"

Philippe's resolve flagged. This could be a trap. There might be no one here, not the people he sought. Perhaps the police, lying in wait for someone to come calling, expecting one group and finding another. "I'm looking for my brother."

"And who's your brother?"

"Where are you?" Philippe asked. The voice first seemed to be above him, then behind him, then beside him. 

"You first. Who is your brother? And why should I know where he is?"

If this was some agent of the gendarmerie, they surely would have seized him already and not played childish games. Steadily, Philippe replied, "Raoul. Raoul de Chagny."

"Philippe!"

This time the voice seemed to have a source. Philippe followed it, quick as blinking to the alleyway on the building's left. The voice gasped, clearly not expecting him to have moved so fast, to have come upon her so suddenly. It was indeed a young woman, with dark blonde hair, falling to her waist in a thick braid. She was tall, a sturdy-looking girl, dressed like a workman in coveralls, with round spectacles on her nose, augmenting the appearance of her large blue eyes. 

She stared at him as incredulously as he looked at her, one hand at her throat. 

"You know my name?" he asked, squinting down at her. 

"Yes," she said, nodding, stilling staring at him in open wonder. "Of course. But what are you doing here? Did _she_ -"

There was a note of violent accusation in the girl's tone, but she was interrupted by a side door opening. Out stepped a slight, imperious-looking man with a pointed beard and keen dark eyes. With a pang, Philippe recognized that face; it was the last thing he'd seen lying on a slab in a sunny room, before he'd closed his eyes and lost his former life to regain another. 

"Doctor Valerius," Philippe whispered, as disbelieving and overcome as though he'd seen a ghost.

"Ah, Monsieur le Vicomte," he said, smoothly, placidly, as though he'd been expecting him. With an elegant gesture, he beckoned him to the door. "Won't you come in?"


End file.
